Unity's unfriendly refreshing after code edited in Visual Studio

So after I've saved some edited code files in Visual Studio, I go back to Unity, and naturally it has to refresh to account for my modifications.
My problem is that this refreshing hogs the UI, and there is no progress bar or any indication of whether it has completed or not, so what I do is just click around and select different elements in the hierarchy until I see it's not sluggish anymore, and then I know it has finished refreshing.

This is terrible. Is there a way (a hidden setting or maybe an editor extension) to make Unity more responsive in this?

I'm using Unity 5.3.4f1 and Visual Studio 2012.

 

there is a small progress wheel at the bottom right of the ui when it is compiling. And it has to compile - visual studio doesn't compile unity scripts.

There are a number of ways to accelerate compilation, ie using plugins folder for scripts that won't change.

 

Just saw this unite video, which mentions about recompiling improvement plans
@50mins

in the meanwhile could try these hacks (as in, all these 4-7 next years while waiting for this from unity)
https://github.com/SaladLab/Unity3D.IncrementalCompiler

 

Ah, it's so tiny I haven't noticed it! Thanks.
(It's strange because I do get a popup progress bar if I externally update a dll that was imported as an asset.)