Comment by nverba

Exactly this. I think some of the tutorials and introductions were a bit overwhelming with their huge dependency lists (see Polymer catalogue), and a lot of opinionated ideas about how to form a Polymer application. Core Polymer is so easy to pick up and flexible. It's been a joy to work with. Well ok, there's a few gotchas, and the build process if you're mostly rolling your own can be a real pain. But once you find your feet with it, everything works pretty well.