If experience is any guide, nothing about anything here will go smoothly ;-)

For example, setting up a module global `_gcd` name for `math.gcd` is a very standard, widespread kind of micro-optimization. But - if that's thought to be valuable (who knows? maybe someone will complain) - why not go on instead to add not-intended-to-be-passed trailing default `_gcd=math.gcd` arguments to the methods? Then it's even faster (& uglier, of course).

Or wrt changing properties to private attributes, that speeds some things but slows others - and, unless I missed it, nobody who wrote that code to begin with said a word about why it was done that way.

I'm not going to "pre-bless" shortcuts in an area where everything so far has been more contentious than it "should have been" (to my eyes). Opening a BPO report is a trivial effort. Skipping NEWS, or not, depends on how it goes.