I’ve ceased using the “Out of the Box” forms. I don’t even use the WebParts unless I have to.
To me the most useful part of SharePoint is the REST API.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj164022.aspx#ReadingData
I organize my sites into little armies of lists and document libraries that hopefully the user will never see.
My user will experience the site the way I want them to. I force them into custom home pages and dashboards cultivated with bootstrapped themes. The data pulled via SharePoint services into widgets and forms and charts that dance merrily beneath their cursors.
Microsoft all but abandoned Chart web parts in 2013. The ones you can make with Excel services are clunky and static. So I pull my data from REST and push it into FusionCharts or GoogleCharts or YahooCharts.
You could still use the OOB list view for some things and hack the DOM to spruce up the rendered layout… or you can consume that List into a JSON object and use Angular to bind it to a view with sorting capability.
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.5.8/angular.min.js
For me it comes down to least amount of time involved… not just for set up, but for maintenance. If I know I’m going to be asked to group rows and columns, or add totals in a manner that isn’t possible with the OOB view, it’s worth it to set up the Single Page App to do it for you.
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