Very interesting UX observations on interactive programming.
Kinda like mirrors in waiting areas, I wonder whether judicious logging messages about the compilation process (not a wall of text, but just enough) will serve to keep users engaged while also educating them about the compilation happening on the backend. That will help users feel more agency, and also improve their mental models of how to structure their code/activity for faster compilation.
That actually helps.
Talking from years of experience doing Android development, where in the early days (and still on some projects) you would have +5 minute rebuild time, and it's supper annoying to check minor things. Having more logs actually helped it seem faster, even tho it wouldn't be, but also you could know where you are stuck and why, which helps identify bottlenecks in build processes.
Sometimes it would be enough to just google what the long task does and see "oh wait I don't actually need that step for my daily development" (e.g. resource crunching, crash reporting initalization etc) or point you in the direction of "why isn't this caching itself".
Quite a useful thing, and should be available as an option at least. In a REPL it might be context noise, but should still be there as a --verbose option.
Kinda like mirrors in waiting areas, I wonder whether judicious logging messages about the compilation process (not a wall of text, but just enough) will serve to keep users engaged while also educating them about the compilation happening on the backend. That will help users feel more agency, and also improve their mental models of how to structure their code/activity for faster compilation.