Simple ways to do SharePoint custom coding

Taking it one by one:
1. Search scalability examples are all over the place. Simply search for "MOSS SEARCH SCALABILITY"
A: Having tuning guides and lab tests isn't the same as real-world scaling. Search is highly dependent on the specific set of information you have. I'm not saying it can't scale - I'm just waiting for more proof points and slightly skeptical given experiences of users we've spoken to.
2. Business Data Catalogs are some of the best tools in the market for integrating LOB apps into the portal.
A: What market is that? As far as I know there isn't a market for products that are just an index to data in other systems for portals. If you're talking real integration of LOB apps into portals, the portal products had this beat back in 2003 with functional business groupings and UI rather than just a list of data fields. And some could even do discovery on customized installations of SAP, Siebel, etc.
3. They call out no OOB admin tools
A: I'm not sure if you're referring to a comment of mine. I'd certainly agree it's wrong to say there are no OOB admin tools - there are plenty and they're much better than in 2003. Still, all that great managing and locking down you describe for sites, permissions, and data is done at farm, site collection, and site level. They don’t think at an enterprise level where you need to work across farms and domains. And it’s difficult to stage and deploy web applications and updates across farms – it’s a manual process to move from one platform to another. That’s why NSE, Echo Technology, Quest, and others exist.
4. Excel Services is not "read only". It allows for "what if" scenarios
A: Does it write that data back to the source? Can you share it with others? Does it persist when you shut down your browser? Then it’s “read only”. Allowing you to do temp stuff on the client isn’t what I’m thinking about, although I can certainly see some use cases where is could have some value.
5. They say workflow is immature yet I havent been able to find anything I couldn't do with Designer or Visual Studio
A: That depends on what workflows you’ve been required to do. Microsoft itself has told us they leave advanced workflow to partners. Joel Oleson said on his blog “If you're looking to do advanced workflows or don't like our web UI, I recommend you check these guys [K2] out. “. I think pTools has some workflow enhancements too.
6. ActiveX is not required for Forms unless you are using digital signatures!!!
A: I wasn’t the source of that statement, but if it’s true then you’re right that it’s not required in all cases, just for those where you need digital signatures.
7. I have no clue what the one person means about a single directory not being enterprise ready... I have TONS of customers with a single AD …
A: This wasn’t a quote from me and I’m not the directory expert, but I believe what Gerry was saying was that the fact that it is difficult to get beyond a single directory is what makes it difficult to use in enterprises (which frequently have multiple directories).