| I disagree that what makes front end hard is mostly accidental complexity. Some of it is for sure (CSS, while I actually quite like it, isn't perfect). However it's fundamentally harder to get the basics right in front end than back end because: - You don't control the environment (meaning "browser quirks" are actually inevitable to some extent) - You don't control the screen size and resolution of the device (meaning responsive design is not accidental complexity, it's inherently a somewhat complicated thing you have to address) - Internal state is often visible to users (an API can be a complete mess internally as long as it returns the correct JSON in a reasonable time. Not so with frontend) Compare that to backend where you control everything except any external APIs you need to use, it's chalk and cheese. The reason the market doesn't value front end skills isn't because they aren't difficult or valuable - a really slick front end is worth its weight in gold. The reason is it's almost impossible to tell in a 1h interview if someone is actually good at front end or not, relative to back end coding tasks which are more deterministic |