[simpsond]

Have you tried jrebel to cut your compile time? It might ease some of that pain.

[eropple]

JRebel isn't applicable to Play - Play (both when running Java and Scala) hosts its own compiler. In dev mode, when you change a .java or .scala file, it recompiles it and reloads it on the fly.

Which is why Play is freaking awesome--well, one of the reasons.