[development] Views - a tool for developers?

[Ryan Courtnage ☠]

Hi all,

We're developing an application with Drupal that requires that we
create several custom modules.  Our modules use forms built with FAPI
(not using CCK).

Now we are at the point where we need to start presenting lists of our
custom content in various forms.  Teaser lists, title-only lists in
blocks, among others.  For creating these lists, we have 2 options:
direct use of db_query or use the Views module.

I can understand how Views is an indespensible module, especially for
site admins building node-types with CCK. However, I'm a developer and
have intimate knowledge of how Drupal's tables relate to eachother in
our implementation.

So here is my question.  Should we be making the effort to expose our
custom modules' fields to Views, and then generate lists we want with
the Views module?  Or should we just roll our own queries?  Is the
primary benefit of Views to make query building easy for site admins?
Is it the only benefit?  What do you do for your custom Drupal
projects?

TIA,
Ryan