For me the annoying thing about ports is that it makes any interop with a JS library of pure functions frustrating. For example, let's say I wanted to use the math.js library. I have a string expression I want to parse and calculate into a mathematical result.

math.js has a nice `math.evaluate` function for this, that in theory would have the type `String -> Result ParseError Float`, if I could directly assign Elm types to a JS function. However, I can't actually use the function like that. I must treat it as a pub-sub mechanism and define the requisite messages, state, update functions, etc. in order to use it. This turns what should've been a one line call into potentially dozens of lines that also forces an architectural change in how the calling code actually calls the function.

The only other real alternative is to rewrite the functionality I need in Elm.