It makes perfect sense to attack as you did in the French Defense since the
locked center pawn structire calls for it. But in other settings creating
these weaknesses around your king can be just enough edge to give
the opponent the game - due to tempo gaining checks and threats.
This might sound just overly simple...but i've noticed that after completed development durning many GM games the pawns on the side of the castled King are much more involved in the game vs. amature players. Of course this shouldn't be done without thought of defense, but so often in amature games I see these pawns never moving until the end of the game. Here is a game I'm proud of where I felt my king was safe against counter attack, and I built a powerful kingside attack using pawns to break-through. Thoughts on this topic?