Turbo Pascal also had very fast compilation times (no more than a few seconds for large programs) 30 years ago, and it worked well then. But you don't need to

Turbo Pascal also had very fast compilation times (no more than a few seconds for large programs) 30 years ago, and it worked well then. But you don't need to compile the whole program, just the functions you have changed. With Lisp incremental compilation is often used, and it is almost instantaneous - just point the mouse at the function you want to recompile in EMACS, hit the load "chord", and it's ready to run in the listener. You're not even aware the compiler is there. Of course, there's a lot more to programmer productivity than compilation speed, as Fred Brooks pointed out.