I'm old enough that I can remember having to wait 45 minutes for a compile to finish and not be able to do anything else with the computer. The worst cases of this were the slow processes which required occasional manual intervention. Or, the situation where if there was an error during compilation, only the first error was reliably meaningful and everything after that might or might not be an accurate reflection of the state of the source code.
It's worth noting that there's a sort of uncanny valley in the amount of time something takes: when it's short, it's not too big a deal to wait for it. When it's fairly long (and predictably so), it's easy enough to context switch (I used to read a lot waiting for compiles to finish). It's the stuff in the 5–10 minute range that kills you.
What depresses me, is that while I can now do something else in a different window while a process runs, the issues with errors and requiring interaction still persist.
It's worth noting that there's a sort of uncanny valley in the amount of time something takes: when it's short, it's not too big a deal to wait for it. When it's fairly long (and predictably so), it's easy enough to context switch (I used to read a lot waiting for compiles to finish). It's the stuff in the 5–10 minute range that kills you.
What depresses me, is that while I can now do something else in a different window while a process runs, the issues with errors and requiring interaction still persist.