R – What SharePoint development concepts are the hardest for ASP.Net developers to understand

Joris Poelmans has linked to most of the resources on his blog. If you want to be get up to speed fast and you are a Microsoft Partner, try to go for a SharePoint 2010 Ignite training, gets you up to speed real fast.

http://jopx.blogspot.com/2009/11/sharepoint-server-2010-getting-started.html

It means that the value type in question is a nullable type

Nullable types are instances of the System.Nullable struct. A nullable type can represent the correct range of values for its underlying value type, plus an additional null value. For example, a Nullable<Int32>, pronounced "Nullable of Int32," can be assigned any value from -2147483648 to 2147483647, or it can be assigned the null value. A Nullable<bool> can be assigned the values true, false, or null. The ability to assign null to numeric and Boolean types is especially useful when you are dealing with databases and other data types that contain elements that may not be assigned a value. For example, a Boolean field in a database can store the values true or false, or it may be undefined.

class NullableExample
{
  static void Main()
  {
      int? num = null;

      // Is the HasValue property true?
      if (num.HasValue)
      {
          System.Console.WriteLine("num = " + num.Value);
      }
      else
      {
          System.Console.WriteLine("num = Null");
      }

      // y is set to zero
      int y = num.GetValueOrDefault();

      // num.Value throws an InvalidOperationException if num.HasValue is false
      try
      {
          y = num.Value;
      }
      catch (System.InvalidOperationException e)
      {
          System.Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
      }
  }
}