alt Hacker NewsCluttered registry does not impact performance.
Unclean uninstalled programs also don't impact performance. Unless it really isn't uninstalled and still runs in the background, but that can easily be fixed by a person competent enough to reinstall Windows once a year.
Settings you don't find, will still be not found after reinstalling Windows.
But to each their own...
In my case it's not about performance, it's about usability and disk space. And again, that time I somehow started a WiFi access point and couldn't find anything online to turn it off. That laptop also at some point had the new folder option get removed from the right click menu. I had to copy/paste one. There are a lot of weird things that can happen over the years.