If you're evaluating Scarry's thought, before dismissing her as utopian (not that that's what you're doing) it's worth reading The Body in Pain as well which is about the grounding of political and other varieties of authority in the physical destruction of the body. It's a deep and serious book.

On Beauty, on the other hand, is definitely utopian. It's a poetic invocation of the power of beauty to connect us to the world. That's specifically why I thought it would be a good recommendation for programmers. As Scarry so eloquently outlines in this book, the ethical power of beauty specifically transforms aesthetics from something that's 'just a matter of subjective taste' to something core to the importance and meaning of what we do.