Machines are thousands of times faster now, yet C++ compilation is still slow somehow (templates? optimization? disinterest in compiler/linker performance? who knows?) Saving grace is having tons of cores and memory for parallel builds. Linking is still slow, though.

Of course Pascal compilers (Turbo Pascal etc.) could be blazingly fast since Pascal was designed to be compiled in a single pass, but presumably linking was faster as well. I wonder how Delphi or current Pascal compilers compare? (Pascal also supports bounded strings and array bounds checks IIRC.)