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Why is the Rust compiler so slow?

(sharnoff.io)
302 points Bogdanp | 4 comments | 26 Jun 25 19:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.61s | source
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adastra22 ◴[26 Jun 25 20:10 UTC] No.44390813[source]▶
As a former C++ developer, claims that rust compilation is slow leave me scratching my head.
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eikenberry ◴[26 Jun 25 20:22 UTC] No.44390918[source]▶
Which is one of the reasons why Rust is considered to be targeting C++'s developers. C++ devs already have the Stockholm syndrome needed to tolerate the tooling.
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MyOutfitIsVague ◴[26 Jun 25 20:56 UTC] No.44391267[source]▶
Rust's compilation is slow, but the tooling is just about the best that any programming language has.
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1. adastra22 ◴[27 Jun 25 07:54 UTC] No.44394703[source]▶
Slow compared to what? I’m still scraping my head at this. My cargo builds are insanely fast, never taking more than a minute or two even on large projects. The only ahead of time compiled language I’ve used with faster compilation speed is Go, and that is a language specifically designed around (and arguably crippled by) the requirement for fast compilation. Rust is comparable to C compilation, and definitely faster than C++, Haskell, Java, Fortran, Algol, and Common Lisp.
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2. ◴[27 Jun 25 08:05 UTC] No.44394786[source]▶
3. johnisgood ◴[27 Jun 25 20:53 UTC] No.44400126[source]▶
Just a few days ago I used cargo to install something. It took like two minutes at the last stage. Definitely not comparable to C or Fortran. I never had to wait that much before. With C++? Definitely. Never with C though.
4. eikenberry ◴[28 Jun 25 18:40 UTC] No.44407046[source]▶
In addition to Go, off the top of my head, you have D, V-lang, Zig, Lua and every interpreted language (including Haskell and Common Lisp, as they both have interpreters). Traditional compiled languages always had terrible UX in this regard which, IMO, is why interpreted languages like Python and Ruby got so popular.