Wrestling with Elm: Introduction

I've recently started tinkering with the elm programming language. While the documentation is pretty good and there is a fair amount of "how-to" material out there, it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for me. I thought I'd document my learning process and some of the pitfalls and "aha!" moments that I encounter along the way. My hope is that this will both help me to consolidate my own learning, as well as to provide potentially useful information for others who run into some of the same problems.