Some changes you make to your app configuration can affect what we need to do in the native code, so when that happens we have to go and do a rebuild on our servers.
When you're hacking away on your own code - JavaScript, HTML and CSS - no re-compilation is required and you can have a new app up and running on your device in a matter of seconds.
We think speeding up that development cycle is one of the keys things we need to deliver on to keep our customers happy.