> this is more of an issue of expecting Elm to be more like Haskell than it is.

Yep, that's it right there.

I wonder if there's some way we could make it clearer that Elm is not Haskell, and trying to use it like it's Haskell won't likely to lead to a good experience.

At any rate, thank you for the feedback! It's definitely an ongoing communication challenge since the two languages have so much syntax in common.