It would be nice if esri/arcgis/utils was not required unless it was needed (i.e. unless application calls createWebMap()). I've found for a simple application that uses createMap() and then adds a single feature layer, I can shave off ~30kb of JavaScript by commenting out the code that requires esri/arcgis/utils.
This could be done w/o changing the API by using a nested require block inside createWebMap(). I'm not aware of any drawbacks to that.
Just wanted to get other people's thoughts on this idea.