Josh Comeau discusses the advancements in static site generation, particularly through the introduction of incremental builds on Gatsby Cloud. This approach addresses the challenge of long build times by allowing for partial recompiles, meaning only the pages affected by content changes are rebuilt, thus significantly speeding up the process. This innovation transforms an O(n) problem into an O(1) problem, making it feasible to manage sites with large volumes of content, such as online magazines or e-commerce platforms, without lengthy downtimes. Gatsby Cloud’s solution involves intelligent caching and parallelization, optimizing the build process through deep integration with specific CMS providers. Although the feature is currently exclusive to Gatsby Cloud, there is a push to ensure Gatsby projects build quickly across all platforms. The development marks a significant step toward the future of static site generation, enabling more dynamic and expansive web applications to be served efficiently from CDNs.