I don't have to recompile a julia function every time I run it so long as I don't close my julia session. If I do need to close and reopen my julia session a lot for some reason, I'd just statically compile the function. In practice, one rarely needs to close a julia session and recompile functions and if one does do it occassionally, the compile time while a little annoying is not too bad.

Compile time will also be actively worked on to reduce it post 1.0 once all the breaking changes are done and pressing bugs are squashed.