The less code has to be converted to the DEX format, the better. Sure, build tools have improved somewhat (incremental DEX compilation comes to mind) but, still, every time I pull in some rather big (~1 MB) .jar file in my project I get noticeably longer build times for non-production builds.

With a 11 MB dependency, even production builds take considerably more time to complete and that gets in the way when you want to test the app on a production setting and you have to wade through a lengthy build process each time you fix a bug.