Speaking about compiled languages (c# in my case) I think that problem would always remain, no matter how performant your develop machine is. Build time could be more or less depending on concrete environment, but often it’s enough to make your attention wanna move from your task to something else like stackoverflow, youtube, twitter etc. and it’s just very annoying.
I’m happy for java developers because of Java’s dynamic class loading, but what can .net (and others) developers do to make build process less painful and obtrusive?
The remark in your question about one’s attention wandering off-task reminded me of this Joel on Software post.
So investing in solid-state disks (since I’m assuming you’re talking about the build process on a dev box while you’re developing and debugging) could help.
Besides, making your computer faster in general can’t hurt, right? 🙂