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.

So you want to build your own frontier model

https://www.givedirection.com/blog.html#build-your-own-frontier-model
1•AndrewKemendo•12s ago•0 comments

The World-Building Doors Are Open, Again

https://twitter.com/joshelman/status/2069420268116967797
1•tosh•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Videopython – local-first video processing, editing and AI workflows

https://github.com/bartwojtowicz/videopython
2•randomstate•3m ago•0 comments

Markdy: Like Mermaid Diagrams, but for Motion

https://markdy.com
1•surprisetalk•4m ago•0 comments

2026 Annual Stack Overflow Dev Survey

https://survey.stackoverflow.co
1•etothet•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Building real time interview with voice agents

https://clariox.ai
1•MykolaBond•6m ago•0 comments

Domain Randomization for Computer Control

https://www.fig.inc/blog/domain-randomization-for-computer-control/
1•hsikka•8m ago•0 comments

Finding signal in noisy street recording over 2 weeks

https://amlucas.github.io/blog/raspberry-pi-listener.html
1•amlucas•8m ago•0 comments

What Is an AI Agent Management Platform (AMP)?

https://www.execlave.com/blog/what-is-an-ai-agent-management-platform
1•rishitmavani•8m ago•0 comments

AI Agent Governance vs. Observability: What's the Difference?

https://www.execlave.com/blog/ai-agent-governance-vs-observability
1•rishitmavani•8m ago•0 comments

Our X account got permabanned on Day 23. Here's the data

https://synrouter.ai/blog/x-day-23-suspension
1•luoshi•9m ago•1 comments

Building a Personal Financial Simulator with AI: 20k Lines of Python

https://warpsimlab.org/reports/building-warpsimlab-with-ai.html
1•alanne•10m ago•0 comments

At the Ambitious New A.I Museum, You Feel the Art, and It Feels You Right Back

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/arts/design/dataland-ai-museum-los-angeles-art-artificial-inte...
1•cyndunlop•11m ago•0 comments

Signing Is for the Bad Days

https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/24/signing-is-for-the-bad-days.html
1•cold_pizz4•11m ago•0 comments

Spider which uses spring trap to capture prey discovered in Australia

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70y138y995o
1•iammiles•12m ago•0 comments

You've Got (Too Much) Mail: Behind the Scenes of the 3/25/26 Voice Outage

https://discord.com/blog/behind-the-scenes-of-the-3-25-26-voice-outage
1•mooreds•12m ago•0 comments

Meta debuts new, cheaper smart glasses under its own brand

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/23/meta-debuts-new-cheaper-smart-glasses-under-its-own-brand/
1•Vaslo•12m ago•0 comments

What Breaks When You Skip the Harness

https://blog.tacoda.dev/what-breaks-when-you-skip-the-harness-eac8105e61f7
1•tacoda•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a tool that'll show how AI agents reads your startup's website

https://agent-ready.co/
1•sharath39•13m ago•0 comments

Databricks candidates fail on known questions – by running the memorized version

https://www.hack2hire.com/blog/what-databricks-actually-tests-and-what-gets-candidates-rejected-2026
1•hack2hire•15m ago•0 comments

A coding agent passed SWE-bench-Live while rewriting the tests it was graded on

https://agnitripathi.substack.com/p/your-coding-agent-can-cheat-on-its
1•agnitripathi•16m ago•0 comments

Semantic Browsing: Controllable Diversity for Image Generation

https://saradorfman1.github.io/SemanticBrowsing-webpage/
2•ilreb•17m ago•0 comments

A radiator only cares about the temperature of incoming air

https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2026/06/23/a-radiator-only-cares-about-the-temperature-of-incoming-...
1•WhyNotHugo•18m ago•0 comments

Systems Security Hall of Fame

https://dfaranha.github.io/post/syssec-hof/
2•jruohonen•19m ago•0 comments

Moving Linear from styled‑components to StyleX

https://www.skovhus.dev/blog/moving-linear-from-styled-components-to-stylex
2•cristinacordova•19m ago•0 comments

Imagin-4D: Image-Guided Controllable Interaction Generation

https://imagin4d.github.io/
2•ilreb•19m ago•0 comments

ECVT e-bike hub motor

https://cedriceveleigh.substack.com/p/ecvt-e-bike-hub-motor
3•CedricE•20m ago•0 comments

Germany battles aggressive outbreak of poisonous caterpillars

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/23/world/germany-poisonous-caterpillars-outbreak-intl
3•rawgabbit•21m ago•1 comments

Polymarket Trading Bot – Late-Entry Probability Capture on BTC 5/15-Min Markets

https://github.com/casatrick/polymarket-trading-bot
1•casatrick•22m ago•1 comments

Former hacker saw the light–and now wants to collect all of it

https://arstechnica.com/features/2026/06/this-former-hacker-saw-the-light-and-now-wants-to-collec...
1•rbanffy•22m ago•0 comments