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by aristofun 849 days ago
> Front-end work is less mathematically complex

Absurd.

In general UI is more complex because of state. Primitively speaking complexity of state machine grows exponentially with every new screen, dialogue.

But people often underestimate this.

2 comments

> In general UI is more complex because of state.

Not just that, but there is a lot of craft (and state) involved in handling excellent micro-interactions correctly. For example, multi-column dropdowns where you're handling the current selection, keyboard focus & navigation, live filtering, matching international characters in the filter, disabled items, direction of expansion, accessibility...

Each "tiny" feature, when done well, will improve the UX through a small micro-interaction without getting in the way. But together, handling state well becomes an exercise in very careful, thoughtful, tedious programming. Between the tedium and the corporate resistance to long-tail excellence, only a developer who really cares will be able to accomplish it.

> only a developer who really cares will be able to accomplish it

great point

Unfortunately "caring" is hard to measure and => usually overlooked and don't help you get bigger salary

I would expect that UI complexity is directly correlated with how bad the UX is.
Presumably you mean inversely correlated?
No.
Then that doesn't make any sense to me.