I mean, yes, one always does want faster feedback - cannot argue with that!

But some of the longer stuff - automating kernel fusion, etc, are just hard problems. And a small model - or even most bigger ones, will not get the direction right…

From my experience, larger models also don't get the direction right a surprising amount of times. You just take more time to notice when it happens, or start to be defensive (over-specing) to account for the longer waits. Even the most simple task can appear "hard" with that over spec'd approach (like building a react app).

Iterating with a faster model is, from my perspective, the superior approach. Doesn't matter the task complexity, the quick feedback more than compensates for it.