Code golf is a recreational pursuit, sometimes educational, sometimes competitive. I don’t think it’s generally expected to be directly useful beyond that.

As far as CPU cycles, sometimes the educational aspect leads code golfers (and such audience they might have) to discover efficiencies they mightn't have otherwise.

It would be interesting to see the kinds of results that come from that. There's some insanely talented tinkerers in the code-golf community.

I mean it’s a learning tool, not a design pattern. Far simpler than figuring out how to measure/cut cpu cycles.