[jaapz]

> It forced the 3rd party package eco system to innovate and create things rather than just wrap existing Javscript libraries.

Writing everything yourself is not innovation. It's busy work.

Sure it's a good way to learn a language, but when you just want to build an app why would you build yet another searchable select when there are more than enough JS options already available....

[the_gipsy]

IMHO this busywork is (mostly) preferrable, because it meant that any package was truly pure Elm, and you could blindly trust it not to be some wrapper that crashed at runtime.

It's a tradeoff, sure. But this way, Elm didn't become just another "JavaScript with better syntax".