What is the point of switch port profiles?

I just inherited an environment that has a couple of Dell 4148T-ON switches and I noticed that bunch of ports were "missing" and after some digging I found switch-port-profiles which I think are hardcoded port configurations.

I have a couple of questions:

1) What is the point of choosing one of the profiles over the other?

2) Can someone point me to some reading material so that I can better understand this switch?  I have searched, but usually run into troubleshooting forums or setup guides that only glaze over switch capabilities.

Thanks!