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Comment by zimpenfish

6 months ago

> Also, Rust compile times aren't that bad the last time I checked.

I dunno - I've got a trivial webui that queries an SQLite3 database and outputs a nice table and from `cargo clean`, `cargo build --release` takes 317s on my 8G Celeron and 70s on my 20G Ryzen 7. Will port it to Go to test but I'd expect it to take <15s from clean even on the Celeron.

I don’t think build time from `clean` is the right metric. A developer is usually using incremental compilation, so that’s where I want the whatever speed I can get.

Nobody likes a 5m build time, but that’s a very old slow chip!

  • "Incremental compilation is fast", is something people only talk about when normal compilation speeds are abysmal. Sadly, C++ set the expectations here, which made both Rust and Swift think that compilation times in the minutes is fine.

    If your code compiles in 1 second from scratch then what do you need incremental compilation for?

    • > If your code compiles in 1 second from scratch then what do you need incremental compilation for?

      That's entirely fair. But, when I watch somebody like Jon Blow, with his 1 second from scratch compilation the result seems to be that he just iterates a lot more without being significantly more productive than I am. I can imagine for some parts of video game design fast iteration might be crucial, yet I struggle to imagine that compilation speed is what matters there. Systems design, art direction, plotting, these don't seem like factors where you need those one second compile times.