Performance is one of the niceties of transducers, but the real benefits are from better code abstractions.

For example, transducers decouple the collection type from data-processing functions. So you can write (into #{} ...) (a set), (into [] ...) (a vector) or (into {} ...) (a map) — and you don't have to modify the functions that process your data, or convert a collection at the end. The functions don't care about your target data structure, or the source data structure. They only care about what they process.

The fact that no intermediate structures have to be created is an additional nicety, not really an optimization.

It is true that for simple examples the (-> ...) is easier to read and understand. But you get used to the (into) syntax quickly, and you can do so much more this way (composable pipelines built on demand!).

I'd argue for most people performance is the single best reason to use them. Exception is if you regularly use streams/channels and benefit from transforming inside of them.

To take your example, there isn't much abstraction difference between (into #{} (map inc ids)) vs (into #{} (map inc) ids), nor is there a flexibility difference. The non transducer version has the exact same benefit of allowing specification of an arbitrary destination coll and accepting just as wide range of things as the source (any seqable). Whether in a transducer or not, inc doesn't care about where its argument is coming from or going. The only difference between those two invocations is performance.

Functions already provide a ton of abstractability and the programmer will rightly ask, "why should I bother with transducers instead of just using functions?" (aka other, arbitrary functions not of the particular transducer shape) The answer is usually going to be performance.

For a literal core async pipeline, of course, there is no replacing transducers because they are built to be used there, and there is a big abstraction benefit to being able to just hand in a transducer to the pipeline or chan vs building a function that reads from one channel, transforms, and puts on another channel. I never had the impression these pipelines were widely used, but I'd love to be wrong!