It caches things between builds (dependencies in particular only have to be built once), and if you use dev builds (the default) it doesn't take as long as prod

It caches things between builds (dependencies in particular only have to be built once), and if you use dev builds (the default) it doesn't take as long as production. For ergonomics you can also install cargo-watch (https://crates.io/crates/cargo-watch https://crates.io/crates/cargo-watch), which helps a bit. An important thing though, if you aren't doing this already, is to not wait for a full build to know if your types check out. You can use cargo-check if you prefer (https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/commands/cargo-check.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/commands/cargo-check.html), but really I recommend using an editor with immediate feedback if at all possible. rust-analyzer (an LSP) is one of the best, and should be available even if you're on Vim or something. Using Rust without snappy editor hints is fairly miserable because of how interactive the error feedback loop tends to be. If you don't rely on a full build for errors - just for actual testing - I find the build times to be perfectly livable (at least in the smallish projects I've done).