> Except with PHP you hit refresh and it is done. With play you wait 10 seconds and it is done. There is a huge difference.

eh? With incremental builds you should be seeing far more 1 second recompilations than 10 second recompilations.

If you're getting 10 second recompiles, the following help:

1) sub projects, it's an absolute must for non-trivial apps

2) use a 3rd party build system (say, GruntJS) for assets

Also, be sure to ;clean;compile prior to starting an incremental build with ~run (and of course, do this from a play> prompt and not bash, you want a warm JVM)