Comment by ModernMech

The biggest thing that's happened in recent time to improve Rust compiler performance was the introduction the Apple M-series chips. On my x86 machine, it'll take maybe 10 minutes for a fresh build of my project, but on my Apple machine that's down to less than a minute, even on the lower end Mac Mini. For incremental builds it only takes a few seconds. I'm fine with this amount of compilation time for what it buys me, and I don't feel it slows me down any because (and I know this sounds like cope) it gives me a minute to breathe and collect my thoughts. Sometimes I find that debugging a problem while actively coding in an interactive REPL is different from debugging offline.

I'm not sure why but the way I would explain it is when you're debugging in an interactive REPL you're always get fast incremental result, but you may be going down an unproductive rabbit hole and spinning your tires. When I hit that compile button, I'm able to take a step back and maybe see the problem from another angle. Still, I prefer a short development loop, but I do think you lose something from it.