Ooooo, bad choice of example. It takes a day or so now, since WebKit is embeddable.

You're trying to separate something that can't be separated. You can't separate "making things take less time" from "making better things possible", because the bound in all cases is time. If you have to spend less time on X, then you've got more to spend on Y; if you can't spend less time on X you'll never reach Y. It's the rare improvement that can only improve quality, but doesn't in any way permit you to instead trade that for time.