Curious to know the coolest things you achieved by configuring your kernel. I know kernel config can be boring, but I'm hoping someone will have an impressive answer.
For me I have a very lightweight kernel that runs wayland on nvidia without any issues to date.
As a Linux user of almost 30 years, compiling hundreds of kernels over the years has given me a great appreciation of pre-build kernels, and a profound gratitude for those who package them up into convenient distros that work out of the box and let me get on with the rest of my life.
i think the learning experience is valid
Absolutely! If you're doing it to learn something, by all means compile your own kernel. Every Linux user should do that at least once in my opinion. But once the learning is done, the novelty wears off fast and it just becomes tedious.