PhD theses often have many figures, and these are often not optimised. My thesis is around 30MB, and that's after I optimised a couple of the most egregious figures. I'm planning to make it better in the corrections phase, but file size is really not something most people will be concerned in the writing phase, and so compile times are likely to suffer.
For further reference, a single-pass compilation of my thesis currently takes 25 seconds, and multiple passes are of course needed if the layout/bibliography changes. I ended up setting up TeXstudio to always compile only once for the preview, and then run the full N complications for the final build. That plus liberal use of \includeonly made compile times not that much of an issue
For further reference, a single-pass compilation of my thesis currently takes 25 seconds, and multiple passes are of course needed if the layout/bibliography changes. I ended up setting up TeXstudio to always compile only once for the preview, and then run the full N complications for the final build. That plus liberal use of \includeonly made compile times not that much of an issue