Havoc is the real deal. I recall following his work very closely "back in the day."

For both coding and using, I prefer less options. Less options on the UI, less options in the API.

Fewer plugins.

My solution is wrapping the WP API calls that I use a lot into a file or files in a theme/lib directory, and load lib from functions.php.

I've just started provisioning lib/ using the Rubygems system. It's pretty cool to run Bundler and have your php files automatically installed. Or create a gemset targeted to a specific theme. So far, one small gem which is still really rough, but I'm liking how easy it is to use.