This is the kind of realm I'm fascinated by: taking an existing chunk of something, respecting the established interfaces (ie. not asking everyone to support ye

This is the kind of realm I'm fascinated by: taking an existing chunk of something, respecting the established interfaces (ie. not asking everyone to support yet another format), and seeing if you can squeeze out an objectively better implementation. It's such a delicious kind of performance gain because it's pretty much a "free lunch" with a very comfortable upgrade story.