It's unfortunately not a well-known feature. The Go extension to VSCode was using "go build" (without "-i") for a long time, and if you're working on something big like Kubernetes, it's almost impossible to work with.
The annoying thing is that "go install" also installs binaries if you run it against a "main" package. I believe the only way to build incrementally for all cases without installing binaries is to use "-o /dev/null" in the main case.
Java applets were all over the place for many years. I remember there were tons of maths, CS and physics sites that used Java to render things like simulations and algorithms.
Sometimes the Java stuff was hidden: Before XMLHttpRequest I personally used Java in several web apps as a way to do messaging with the server, because Java permitted you to do arbitrary socket connections. You inserted a 0x0 applet into the page and then used the JS bridge that both IE and Netscape provided. Aside from the JVM startup time (which could be several seconds) it was pretty great, actually. I wrote a commercial audio conferencing system that showed the talk status of each participant, for example.
Basically, Java applets were (were, mind you) highly successful before the advent of Flash and AJAX.
The Norwegian government's BankID system (used by all Norwegian banks, and also supported as a login mechanism across all the government's digital solutions, including the national paperwork portal where everyone files their tax returns) only migrated away from Java 18 months ago [1].
Based on adoption rates I would say Java applets were very successful. One area were Java applets were still actively used until very recently was in online banking, where it was used for secure OTP entry. I'm sure there are still some that use it.
As a technology, it was fairly clear even in the late nineties that Java was a bad fit for the web.
The Borland compilers were single-pass compilers; they did not go through an AST, but generated machine code directly from parser input. Also, the original Turbo Pascal compiler was written in assembly language. (Not sure about the later compiler versions used by BP and Delphi.)
Also, the language was quite simple. With large, complex programs, the most time-consuming stage was in the linking of the final binary.
If you want a similarly fast compiler today, look at Go.
The annoying thing is that "go install" also installs binaries if you run it against a "main" package. I believe the only way to build incrementally for all cases without installing binaries is to use "-o /dev/null" in the main case.