It depends on what you're comparing it to. It is indeed very slow when compared to a C compiler, or a zig compiler, or even a Java compiler. C++ can be comparable, or slower, or faster, depending on the C++ features used.

Sure, maybe rustc's performance compares favorably to how tsc used to be, but that's not the benchmark most Rust developers (such as myself, for more than 10 years now) care about.

> a “crate” are just a directory at the root of your repo, the ergonomic impact is literally zero.

Nonsense. That's another Cargo.toml to maintain, and another place you might need to add/remove dependencies, and you have to manage the dependency tree among your sub-crates. The ergonomic impact is absolutely not literally zero, and I'd even say it's enough to be annoying.