It's fascinating to me how the values and priorities of a project's leaders affect the community and its dominant narrative. I always wondered how it was possible for so many people in the Rust community to share such a strong view on soundness, undefined behavior, thread safety etc. I think it's because people driving the project were actively shaping the culture.

Meanwhile, compiler performance just didn't have a strong advocate with the right vision of what could be done. At least that's my read on the situation.