Almost all of the improvements came from changes to Julia's Base that improved compilation times and changes to tooling which suggest trivial changes to improve

Almost all of the improvements came from changes to Julia's Base that improved compilation times and changes to tooling which suggest trivial changes to improve compilation times. In v1.5 or so this would've been a heroic feat. In v1.7 this is something any undergrad could do in a weekend to any module. So yes that proves that things have changed quite a bit.