Compiling a C++ file takes a very long time when compared to C# and Java. It takes significantly longer to compile a C++ file than it would to run a normal size Python script. I'm currently using VC++ but it's the same with any compiler. Why is this?
The two reasons I could think of were loading header files and running the preprocessor, but that doesn't seem like it should explain why it takes so long.
An easy way to reduce compilation time in larger C++ projects is to make a *.cpp include file that includes all the cpp files in your project and compile that. This reduces the header explosion problem to once. The advantage of this is that compilation errors will still reference the correct file.
For example, assume you have a.cpp, b.cpp and c.cpp.. create a file: everything.cpp:
#include "a.cpp"
#include "b.cpp"
#include "c.cpp"
Then compile the project by just making everything.cpp