I just bought a new bike and had my heart set on a compact setup. I was coming from a standard triple with a 11-23 cassette. I do a lot of hill work, so I thought I should try to match the range I use on my triple. My TCR came with a 53/39 and a 12-25 and I was convinced I was going to swap it out for a 50/34 with a 11-23. My friends at my LBS lovingly talked me out of it with positive encouragement such as “compacts are for pussies”… am I glad they did! The compact would have had me shifting chainrings too often. I never touched anything smaller than the 30-19 on the triple anyway, so I just don’t need anything smaller than a 39-25. The 39-25 is actually slightly smaller than my old 30-19! My chainline, efficiency, and shifting on my double is much better than my triple.
One other note – I was thanking one of my wonderful friends above for convincing me, and he said that another benefit of the standard double over the compact is added stiffness when on the big chain ring, due to the 130mm BCD vs. 94mm BCD of a compact crank… At least, that was his theory.