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Almost every compiler is fast on toy-sized programs. E.g. the standard Java compiler is pretty fast, and uses little resources.

It becomes visible when you build a large project: you notice that when you face 100k LOCs, efficiency of every compiler's part starts to matter, and RAM usage may grow to uncomfortable levels if your compiler does not care enough.

Yes, some compilers are slow on large programs because they don't scale well. Others aren't, because they do. That's what I said.

>People like fast compile times, but that is more to do with language design than the choice of language for the compiler.

People like fast compile times and people either like to use (or are forced to use) languages that are inherently slow to compile. That's exactly why compiler performance is absolutely critical.

> I am not sure that the runtime efficiency of the compiler binary is that important.

If the compiler is for JIT, then efficiency will be important.