C++ is never fast to compile, but some design decisions will make it much slower than it needs to be. The less stuff you put in your headers, the faster it will

C++ is never fast to compile, but some design decisions will make it much slower than it needs to be. The less stuff you put in your headers, the faster it will build (for the most part). You can also sometimes make templates slow by programming horrors like iteration through repeated template instantiation. There's an old joke about those sorts of problems. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this," says the patient. The doctor replies, "then don't do that."