[ob]

And that is exactly why people love Elm:

  > "foo" "bar"
  -- TYPE MISMATCH --------------------------------------------- repl-temp-000.elm
  
  You are giving an argument to something that is not a function!
  
  3|   "foo" "bar"
             ^^^^^
  Maybe you forgot some parentheses? Or a comma?

Also

  > "foo" + "bar"
  -- TYPE MISMATCH --------------------------------------------- repl-temp-000.elm
  
  The left argument of (+) is causing a type mismatch.
  
  3|   "foo" + "bar"
       ^^^^^
  (+) is expecting the left argument to be a:
  
      number
  
  But the left argument is:
  
      String
  
  Hint: To append strings in Elm, you need to use the (++) operator, not (+).
  <http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm-lang/core/latest/Basics#++>

[the_af]

Interesting! Thanks for the example.

How do compiler errors look in Elm with generic functions involved, about which the compiler doesn't have any helpful hardcoded knowledge? (I.e. no "+" or strings involved).

[elros]

If you mean typeclasses, Elm doesn't have them.

Regarding hardcoded messages, there's been at some point talk in the community regarding allowing library authors to have some sort of hook to compiler that would make it possible to customize specific error messages along with a package.