[tomkarlo]

To put it another way: being a good software developer requires the ability to internalize and traverse complex mental models entirely within your head, then convert them into a set of models and rules that implement that mental model for others to use. So as a group, developers are self-selecting for being very tolerant of a relatively complex UX relative to the median user.

I suspect you could find this in other fields - for example, I'd be that a commercial airlines pilot is pretty good at maintaining a complex mental model of his aircraft's systems in his head. But very few of those fields are asked to create products / experience for a set of users that does not have that same capacity to deal with abstract mental models.

Making that worse is the fact that at least in most physical systems, there are constraints on complexity and process, or established social scripts for a process. (E.g. most of us "know" how a restaurant works, and we all definitely know how the ordering process works.) Software doesn't have those constraints so you can get into trouble fast.