When people talk about the slow "Scala" compiler I always wonder what they actually do. I mean most of the time you are lightyears slower I thinking how to solve the problem than the compiler compiles. I mean changing a file compile -> looking at the result takes on my machine mostly 1-2 seconds (incremental compilation). Javac isn't lightyears faster and on go I would take nearly the same time, only full compilation is way way faster.
But, I also do a lot of front-end web work, and Webpack takes a lot longer to rebundle my files than Scala takes to compile. I work on a Rails monolith that takes as long to start up as my Scala project does for a fresh compile. So I think the complaints are way overblown.
The end result is that my state of flow is continually interrupted, or at least under assault. Bobbling my head to trance music while implicits are resolved is the only antidote that I know of.
Solution: restart SBT, wait for a minute for it to recompile the project definition; rebuild project. That inconvenience wears on you.
However my Scala project actually doesn't use too many "special" feature's I would say I actually don't use any obscure language feature, the only operator which I've written yet is a "~~" for a StringBuilder and else I actually wrote out EVERY type parameter to my function, etc. I would say we write our code so that it's readable inside all major ide's and is understandable by junior developers.
6 years ago I got overclocked watercooled CPU just for Scalac.