Is there actually a benefit to compiling as you go along? There is. It gives you a shorter feedback loop—which in general, when designing (UI, writing software, visual design etc.) is a good thing.

I am not even sure which languages are installed by default on my linux (20.3) box. At least I have Ruby, Perl, Python, GCC and the shell scripts, but there probably are more.

Right now, compiling KDE's basic modules and libraries on a single machine takes me around three hours, and that's just to get a desktop. Even with a core 2 duo, it's a lot of time to sit around and ...