I agree. But it is critical to ensure that what one is improving is something worthwhile. 12% improvement in compute costs for a project with lots of compute sp

I agree. But it is critical to ensure that what one is improving is something worthwhile. 12% improvement in compute costs for a project with lots of compute spend = massive win. 12% improvement in compute costs for a hobby project running on a single VM = probably negligible. 12% improvement in function runtime some arbitrary place in the stack = possibly net negative, taking into account developer opportunity costs. It is almost always useful to talk in terms of outcomes, ie benefits to customer/users/team/company.