[pjmlp]

As proven by D, OCaml, F#, Delphi, Ada, C++23 (with modules, VC++/clang 18), it is a matter of toolchain.

What we need is a Rust interpreter, or having something like Cranelift properly integrated, to only depend on LLVM when doing release builds on the CI/CD.

[KingOfCoders]

Having used Scala for some years with it's abysmal compile speed, I fear it has to do with complexity of the language and features, it was "implicit" in Scala, it might be the borrow checker in Rust (IANACG)

[steveklabnik]

If you examine what takes time in the Rust compiler, the borrow checker is never a significant component.

The largest single bit tends to be codegen, which is why cargo check is so much faster than cargo build.

[KingOfCoders]

Ah!

[pjmlp]

Note that I left out Scala, while I included other languages of similar complexity, exactly because improving compile times has never been a major focus in Scala land, versus features.

Example, development effort wasted on Scala 3 Python like syntax.

There are several performance reports that show that the major culprit is the pile of LLVM IR sent to the backend.