> interesting that if including `vector` in STL brings in 27,000 lines, and the author's implementation of the functionality for the example program was only 1,000 lines, that the compilation time difference is only 4X

I imagine the time taken varies much more based on what's on the lines, rather than how many there are.

I'm not aware of specific pathological cases, but I'm sure you could make maybe 10 lines take 20 times longer than both of those vectors put together.