Comment by rerdavies

Disabling Defender on directories involved in compiling and linking speeds up compile and link times by a factor of 5x or 6x. It's not a subtle difference.

I agonize over the insanity of removing Defender protection on precisely the files that are most vulnerable on my computer each time I do it. But I do it anyway.

Interestingly, Android Studio offers to turn off Defender protection for development directories for you, and does so each time you load a project, if you haven't already done so. So I no longer feel like I'm alone in my insanity.