Comment by kingcauchy

First principles are your foundational beliefs, orientations, ideas upon which your values are construction, mission is built, direction is set, decisions are made for a business usually (I think the idea applies in general but personally I see the terminology more in technology/business). It's most important for being the deciding factor between two important values or difficult decisions say. For example, if your principles first and foremost say people have a right to their opinion, and your values say people should be respectful to each other and that people should honest, there can be conflict when someone is honestly disrespectful. But first principles would say (in a company at least) that a person has a right to their opinion and that's more important that they were honest about it than necessarily respectful. Contrived example but I hope that communicates the idea! For technology it more means the principles upon which product direct and tradeoffs are based