I am always curious when reading these articles: How much are about unique optimizations for this specific language vs. general programming tricks. For example

I am always curious when reading these articles: How much are about unique optimizations for this specific language vs. general programming tricks. For example, his use of the classic "calling a function on every iteration vs. calling it just once" is pretty basic. Do you guys do the same thing? Review every "optimize your Python" and "Ruby speedups" etc. post and tick off various iterations of "Intro to Programming Day 2", "RTFM", and "finally, something I didn't know based on the implementation of this language"? And do you feel that most of these are really about the language, or about programming in general?