When I want to tinker it’s usually because I want to make something faster than anyone else has done. Does that help illustrate why some might prefer to tinker in Zig, and why your definition of tinker seems a little narrow?
If you only ever think of tinkering for the purpose of execution speed ninjutsu, isn't it your definition of tinkering that's far too narrow?
I personally think the optimization challenge is fun. I like digging in to low level stuff, reviewing the assembly dumps and processor pipeline architectures. I fail or give up most of the time, but I enjoy learning in the process.
I’m just trying to show how Zig fits my tinkering well, since you said you can’t see how Zig would ever be a good fit for tinkering. I’m not saying it’s a good fit for all forms of tinkering.