A Developer's North Star: User Utility Above All Else

Loris Cro lays out a ranked hierarchy for software priorities: usefulness to the end user comes first, followed by correctness, then maintainability and efficiency. Each lower tier exists only to serve the one above it — a bug-free codebase means nothing if the product is user-hostile, and memory safety is irrelevant without a real commitment to correctness.

The argument pushes back against developer-centric framings that treat language choice, abstraction quality, or developer experience as ends in themselves. Cro acknowledges caring about his own DX, but only insofar as it helps him ship software users can love. Elegant architecture that nobody can maintain, or clever code that runs too slowly to use, fails the test.

The piece reads as a corrective to common engineering discourse where technical aesthetics often eclipse user outcomes. By framing utility as the singular north star, Cro provides a simple decision rule for resolving the trade-offs that dominate day-to-day engineering work.