[reknih]

IMO draft seems like a crutch: Because TeX has to reprocess the whole document and the sty-files of each imported package every time, you do not have a huge budget for your document content. Instead, you are given the option to sacrifice image decoding, plot drawing, and output fidelity to keep TeX humming along.

Sure, that's better than nothing but I cannot help but wonder whether there could be an architecture where you cut down on repeating work and get faster recompiles that way!