I can think of a few reasons to build elsewhere like it being easier to do as a non-root user, and so you don't fill a system drive with experimentation, but I'

I can think of a few reasons to build elsewhere like it being easier to do as a non-root user, and so you don't fill a system drive with experimentation, but I'm not quite sure I know specifically why you're saying so. As for descriptive names, I agree.