@erikenglund \- personally, I use the TinyCC/tcc backend on x86_64 Linux and routinely get <1.0 to 1.7 second compile times for 20..40 kLoc of not too meta-programming heavy Nim (transitive closure of all stdlib deps, etc.). The [tcc mob branch](http://repo.or.cz/tinycc.git) is usually pretty functional as a Nim backend. (As with any back end swap, some things may break from time to time.) For a fast workflow, you can make `tcc` the default/debug backend in your `nim.cfg` or `config.nims` files with some easy switch to re-activate gcc/clang optimized compiles when you want to wait for optimized builds (or wait even longer for PGO builds).
It's possible that your static linking/specific OS/platform would mess things up. The huge range of backend speeds can also create confusion. You may be able to measure how much of the time is the Nim compiler vs the backend by doing `nim c -c` as well as your usual build.
