Excellent thread.
I must admit, I did start out trying to keep everything optimised on the Pi 3B+, was this way of doing it faster than that, etc.. But later realised that it was Stability over anything else I was after.
As for speed, in my application - using Node-RED as a communication hub, data logger and HMI for a Home Control system running on a separate controller, time is not of the essence, what does in matter if I don't read a temperature for another second?
However, I shall watch this thread with interest to see if I can add some of the stuff to my flows!