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.

Hister – Search Engine for Local Files and Visited Webpages

https://hister.org/
1•RebelPotato•19s ago•0 comments

The Specification Is Not a Document

https://aicoding.leaflet.pub/3mtgs36dnq22o
1•chadfowler•2m ago•0 comments

I treat my AI coding agents as subcontractors

https://karavox.org/devlog/agents-as-subcontractors.html
1•lukasznowak•4m ago•0 comments

GitHub blames 8-hour outage on autoscaling fail and VS Code retry storm

https://www.theregister.com/saas/2026/08/19/github-blames-8-hour-outage-on-autoscaling-fail-and-v...
1•stevehipwell•6m ago•0 comments

Button Stealer

https://anatolyzenkov.com/stolen-buttons/button-stealer
1•surprisetalk•6m ago•0 comments

Fuji: A minimal harness to deploy agents at scale

https://github.com/paradise-runner/fuji
2•dividedcomet•6m ago•1 comments

Proxima Fusion Raises €411M to Build Europe's Commercial Fusion Champion

https://www.proximafusion.com/press-news/proxima-fusion-raises-eu411-million-to-build-europes-com...
1•robin_reala•7m ago•0 comments

For no apparent reason Oral-B removed flossing from their app

https://blog.jgc.org/2026/08/for-no-apparent-reason-oral-b-removed.html
2•jgrahamc•8m ago•0 comments

The Pattern Cards: How the Spec Became the Source Code

https://kelright.com/blog/the-pattern-cards
2•orbOfOrthanc•9m ago•0 comments

Moderna, Merck cancer vaccine shows promise in late-stage phase three trial

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/moderna-merck-cancer-vaccine-shows-initial-late-stage-melanoma-da...
7•dominikposmyk•13m ago•1 comments

Show HN: JobEasyApply – AI job auto-applier for LinkedIn, Greenhouse and Lever

https://jobeasyapply.com
3•workplace_1•13m ago•0 comments

GPS-01: A simplified interactive explainer of how GPS works

https://gps-01.dmytro.fyi/
3•dimuuu•14m ago•0 comments

Does ChatGPT recommend your local business? I measured it

https://localseen.ai/
2•iskifogl•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Carno.js – a Nest-style application framework for Bun

https://github.com/carnojs/carno.js
3•l-crispr•15m ago•0 comments

California regulators restrict by 70% what replacement tires you can buy

https://www.kcra.com/article/san-joaquin-county-maintenance-district-fee-increase/73470859
2•ytNumbers•17m ago•1 comments

PulseMarkt – An AI-powered marketplace for discovering trending products

https://www.pulsemarkt.com/
2•scottchecola•18m ago•0 comments

You Don't Need a Fancy IDP to Build Platform Self-Service in 2026

https://newsletter.masterpoint.io/p/you-don-t-need-a-fancy-idp-to-build-self-service-in-2026
3•mooreds•19m ago•0 comments

"This is how great powers decline" [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6qIYufgvg8
2•mooreds•19m ago•0 comments

Firefox 154.0 Released

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/154.0/releasenotes/
5•DemiGuru•19m ago•0 comments

Langfuse v4: agent evals and traces rebuilt on one immutable ClickHouse table

https://langfuse.com/changelog/2026-08-17-langfuse-v4
2•JannikM•20m ago•0 comments

The Bleep – a maintained successor to The Fuck

https://github.com/stamparm/thebleep
2•stamparm•22m ago•0 comments

Magic Squares, Cubes, Hypercubes: Origins, Recent Advances [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of8Maaq1Fsg
2•ttctciyf•23m ago•1 comments

The Price of Being Useful

https://thinkingrock.substack.com/p/the-price-of-being-useful
4•7777777phil•23m ago•0 comments

When str.lower() is a security vulnerability in Python

https://sethmlarson.dev/when-str-lower-is-a-security-vulnerability
2•SethMLarson•24m ago•0 comments

Can an LLM make a feature-length movie on its own?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/24RKHEkwgZ6Hm6ygY/can-an-llm-make-a-feature-length-movie-on-its-own
2•mchinen•24m ago•0 comments

The most frequent entity in my own documents is me

https://tidymacapp.com/most-frequent-entity-is-me
2•sdiazthomas•25m ago•0 comments

Why Sheep Need Pigs in Sheepdog's Clothing

https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/why-sheep-need-pigs-in-sheepdogs
1•surprisetalk•26m ago•0 comments

Three years of writing a browser engine, in 50 posts

https://codemusings.nl/@jaytaph/p/9A6TCthSHwFEZwGbzSumbN
1•jaytaph•30m ago•0 comments

AI acts as ideological chameleon and deepen political polarization, study find

https://agencia.fapesp.br/artificial-intelligence-acts-as-an-ideological-chameleon-and-may-deepen...
3•DeepLogin•30m ago•1 comments

DiploBench – watching LLMs play Diplomacy

https://diplobench.com
1•laverya•30m ago•1 comments