As a Python developer who recently wrote a pure Python ECDSA/bitcoin library, these are very helpful. However performance is not always better. For example I had this function:

    def point_mul(p, d):
        n = p
        q = None
    
        for i in range(256):
            if d & (1 << i):
                if q is None:
                    q = n
                else:
                    q = point_add(q, n)
    
            n = point_add(n, n)
        return q

but when i changed the loop to this :

    for i in reversed(format(d, 'b')):
        if i == '1':

I found out it performed much better.