I knew nothing about SharePoint 3 months ago. Since then I've had to create a couple of custom web parts for my company's new support site and I have to agree with your friend, it's a big mess.
At first I was impressed by how much you could do with the platform without any coding at all. But it's been frustrating getting my stuff to work properly. I tried to incorporate a user control I had written earlier that worked great in a regular web app, but a key part simply wouldn't work in SharePoint for reasons that are still beyond me. I managed to find a workaround, but lost two weeks in the process.
It was also disheartening to learn that the development environment has to be a machine actually running SharePoint, which has to run under Windows 2003/2008. I had to set up a virtual machine on my existing system, which isn't a big deal but it's one more hurdle you have to overcome.
In all, it seemed way too confusing for what you're trying to do. I agree with the sentiment that a lot of time is spent on installation, configuration, and deployment versus actual development. Maybe the 2010 version will be better. It's certainly not a product I would look forward to working with.
