I sometimes think I've seen everything programmers do, and then something like this pops up.
> You can make your C++ code compile fast by simply not using slow paths through the compiler.
D is fast to compile because it sidesteps or redesigns features that make for slow compilation.
The trouble is, people use templates more and more until they hit compile speed problems. I'd argue that this limit is much higher in D, but the end result is similar.
I get antsy when my test suite takes more than a second or so.
(Yes, I know neither javac nor ghci are particularly fast, but that doesn't detract from the general point.)
A single templated function & a few n*100kloc macros later, and I got the compile time down to ~1s on a crappy laptop.
Macros are 'fast paths' through compilers — they copy structures in memory, rather than going through the entire disk->lex->parse chain.
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1988-09/page/n148/...