frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

How to get up to speed on software development from the top down

1•dave2299•1y ago
Hi everyone, I am a non-technical founder. I’ve bootstrapped a tech-enabled services company over the past year that’s growing, profitable, and close to 15K a month in revenue. I, by nature, prefer to be involved in the weeds of what’s happening in each domain of my business at first, even if that results in slower business growth. I built my company with a white label portal software (Copilot.app), Airtable, Squarespace, AppSheet,and some ChatGPT scripts.

Now, I need to start building out custom tools. I want to take a deep dive into software development, starting with front and back end web development from the top down, rather than starting from the bottom up as a coder.

If I keep growing eventually I will end up bringing on technical employees, but I want to understand the lay of the land before I start down that road, and I found that I’m able to do a lot once I understand the domain using low code and no code tools. So for example, things like Retool, etc. will accomplish most of the next phase of building I need. But I want to have a reading list of 10 or 20 books or blogs or courses or podcast, etc.. That will help me start getting the way of the land on how to architect software.

I know basic python, basics of the building blocks of programming at the intro level. I just read Designing Data-Intensive Applications (2nd ed on O’Reilly). Does someone have a list of 10 modern books that would help me understand big picture topics like this?

Comments

sherdil2022•1y ago
I offer personal / 1:1 training, mentoring and technical consultancy for founders and co-founders.

Please feel free to reach out to me. My throwaway email is in my profile, and I will respond.

Show HN: BoundaryBench – benchmarking coding agents under real sandbox policy

https://github.com/boundary-bench/boundary-bench
1•_orcaman_•2m ago•0 comments

Sandboxing

https://zed.dev/blog/sandboxing
1•minimaxir•3m ago•0 comments

Did medieval people love their children?

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/did-medieval-people-love-their-children/
1•paulpauper•4m ago•0 comments

Data center foes win big in Tuesday's primaries

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/05/data-center-foes-win-big-in-tuesdays-primaries-01025481
1•mapping365•4m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Voca – Most AI tutors wander. I built one that follows a curriculum

https://vocalessons.com/
1•amreldessoukiad•5m ago•0 comments

The Three AI Pills

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-three-ai-pills
1•paulpauper•5m ago•0 comments

Atlassian Rovo Exfiltrates Data, Bypassing Controls

https://www.promptarmor.com/resources/atlassian-rovo-exfiltrates-data
1•hackerBanana•6m ago•0 comments

GDP Haters Aren't Making Serious Arguments

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/gdp-haters-arent-making-serious-arguments
1•paulpauper•6m ago•0 comments

Airtable Acquisition Is Kick in the Gut for Software Unicorns and Their Backers

https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/airtable-acquisition-is-kick-in-the-gut-for-software-unic...
1•petilon•7m ago•1 comments

2026 Python Type System and Tooling Survey

https://discuss.python.org/t/2026-python-type-system-and-tooling-survey-is-out/108426
1•ocamoss•7m ago•0 comments

Linux as a library: a coding agent with no VM and no sandbox

https://www.rapidnative.com/blogs/we-kept-the-shell-and-left-the-vm-anyway
1•sanketsahu•7m ago•0 comments

Cloudflare bought exmaple.com to prevent typos (2023)

https://blog.cloudflare.com/typo-traps-analyzing-traffic-to-exmaple-com-or-is-it-example-com/
1•somebudyelse•8m ago•0 comments

Lessons learned from using GitHub Actions

https://joshghent.com/github-actions-lessons/
1•speckx•8m ago•0 comments

Phishers are hijacking legitimate cloud infrastructure

https://securelist.com/cloud-platforms-in-phishing/120832/
2•lschueller•9m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What would make you list your AI product on a new marketplace?

1•Achrima•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cool Concepts

https://mkornreich.me/projects/coolconcepts/
1•enjoyyourlife•12m ago•0 comments

AI is a bubble, just like dot-com

https://www.constraintlab.com/blog/ai-is-a-bubble-just-like-dot-com.html
2•potetm•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LingoForge – AI-powered IELTS writing with instant feedback

https://lingoforge.net/en/start
1•chenillen•13m ago•0 comments

SpaceX spooks investors with debut earnings report

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/spacex-spooks-investors-with-debut-earnings-report/
4•cdrnsf•17m ago•0 comments

Interlock: A runtime firewall for AI agents that assumes injection won

https://yashwanthreddymali.com/blog/interlock-exfiltration-at-runtime/
2•yxshwanthreddy•17m ago•1 comments

Antibiotic resistance in kids is rising around the world

https://www.livescience.com/health/medicine-drugs/its-real-and-its-happening-antibiotic-resistanc...
3•speckx•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PON-BEAM re-architecture of the Erlang VM

https://github.com/matheuscamarques/pon_beam
1•matheusosan•19m ago•0 comments

Jensen Says No AI Bubble 'Incredibly Profitable' 'Happy to Pay'

https://www.barchart.com/story/news/3665107/nvidias-jensen-huang-says-theres-no-ai-bubble-because...
2•mapping365•20m ago•0 comments

New 16T parameter model with a 4B token context window released

https://huggingface.co/tsfrm/vacuum-16t
3•jedberg•21m ago•1 comments

New platform to predict human medical outcomes [pdf]

https://oliolabs.com/RoseberryKrauszWilliamsTingley_2026.pdf
1•appliedbio•21m ago•0 comments

Coinage – every dollar invested until the second you spend it

https://www.coinage.app
3•nandhd•22m ago•0 comments

AI Security Leaderboard: Methodology, Results and Minimal Standard

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.03070
2•sbulaev•22m ago•0 comments

Long Range Career Advice

https://twitter.com/spakhm/status/2085040887474667865
1•tosh•22m ago•0 comments

Proxmox officially supports Arm, with some caveats

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/proxmox-ve-arm-official/
1•mikece•22m ago•0 comments

iCloud Private Relay leaks real IP addresses

https://proton.me/blog/icloud-private-relay-ip-leak
2•mikece•23m ago•1 comments