As a long time Poser user trying to make shaders for DS I can tell you that the learning curve isnt' too steep.  It does take some getting used to, and there are things that are somewhat easier in DS.  You can't replicate the exact look of some shaders, but you can get pretty close with a bit of work.

But, and it's a big but.....you have to be able to deal with the various updates breaking things that worked in previous versions, new bugs introduced with each beta.  This is the thing that killed my using DS previously, and may send me to the nut house yet. LOL!