I think that the main problem with Elm is that Evan wants to design the perfect system.

This is of course a laudable goal but I think that clashes with the complexity of the real world.

A consequence of this is that if you want to do something Evan spent time designing a solution for you're going to have an awesome experience, he is a great designer, but on the other hand as soon as you try to do something different you're out of luck.

This has the nice effect that what's there is really nice but there is no middle ground and you either get something that is well deisigned and extremely polished or nothing at all.