Computer people put a high value on precision because a single semicolon is the difference between a working Linux kernel and a jumble of compile-time errors.
Top is an amazing tool, don't get me wrong but its very limited. The major flaw of top (and its not really a flaw) is that Top is limited to one machine. When you have a cluster of say 20-300 you need more powerful tools.
Also top doesn't measure things like the current latency and other things they need to know at the moment.