If you try to automate as much as possible your solution deployment, you'll likely enjoy having your alternate access mappings deployed in a structured and repeatable way.
Turns out that it's quite easy and manageable by stsadm without doing some custom development.
To add an internal url to your web application :
stsadm -o addalternatedomain -url
http://agents.company.com -urlzone Internet -incomingurl
http://agentABC.company.com
And to add a public url :
stsadm -o addzoneurl -url
http://SP2010:88 -urlzone Internet -zonemappedurl
http://www.company.com
Quite handy and something we can add to our little batch files that deploy our SharePoint solutions.
