Development would be slower because there's less turnover over time, and fresh eyes aren't looking at the same problems.
Development would be faster because a single person could build on centuries of experience rather than having to train newcomers.

How have you approached this problem in your own projects?

I've gone with the second option in my own setting. A yinrih reaches maturity at around 53 Earth years, and lives for over 7 centuries on average. I've stated elsewhere that they achieve spaceflight 5000 years after gaining sapience, which if you scale that to a human lifespan would be like H. sapiens going from crudely knapped flint hand axes to orbital flight in 500 years.

In the yinrih's case, there was no ice age to impede the invention of agriculture, and they unlocked writing at the start of the game, so to speak, instead of having to spend science points to invent it.

But most of all, they were hyperfocused on getting to the stars before even knowing what exactly the stars were, so they spent a lot of collective energy answering a lot of questions. What are the stars? If other sophonts dwell among the stars, and we ourselves are sophonts, does that mean we have our own star? Is that what that hot light in the daytime sky is? Why is there a round shadow cast on the ring on summer nights? Does that mean the earth we stand on is round?

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[–] twocupsofsugar@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I've approached this with my own aliens, a species which can routinely live to 1,000 years due to advancements in medical technology. Their average life span in generally between 700-800 years so a long time. For them technological development didn't actually move slower in comparison, as there's a lot of factors that goes into developing tech with the environment, locale economics, and geopolitics playing a much larger role in general. But one thing of note, because they live so long this gives them the opportunity to become skilled in a variety of trades in comparison to other short lived sophonts which means they tend to prefer technology that's more geared towards increases in individual productivity and self-sufficiency than say mercantilism or mass commerce.

I'd imagine generational differences would be pretty extreme if they developed so quickly. Early cultures didn't really have a concept of futurisms or progression, life was cyclical. If tech advancement was faster and occurred over the course of a single generation, this greatly changes their perspective of religion and the world around them. The idea of "progressing" might flavor their words perspective much earlier in their history than with us. I'm still developing this part for my own aliens