While I agree with you, this project originslly began (IIRC) to showcase a new theme for Ubuntu/Gnome. The main developers are designers first, and the target is to make Linux desktop more user friendly.
You and I survived the trials amd now wamt performance. I personally will lilely never use elementary, but you and I are not the target audience.
I think each OS release must include data about the performance (Speed and resources at steady state).
We want performant and lean OS's.