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.

The iPhones 18 Pro

https://daringfireball.net/2026/09/the_iphones_18_pro
1•ValentineC•5m ago•0 comments

Zed v1.20 Is Out

https://zed.dev/releases/stable
1•soltanov•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built an PDF accessibility checker that is cross platform

https://github.com/visionably/outloud
1•yashbhatnagar•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A Mac native app that helps you reason through math/CS pdf textbooks

https://marginstudy.lemonsqueezy.com/checkout
1•alricsiu•8m ago•0 comments

Robots Building Robots

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202609/1370528.shtml
1•freakynit•9m ago•0 comments

Industrializing Humanization

https://www.unite.ai/industrializing-humanization/
1•50kIters•11m ago•0 comments

Rentomojo Makes Money

https://finshots.in/markets/how-rentomojo-makes-money/
1•vismit2000•14m ago•0 comments

Free AI Business Tools – No Sign-Up Required

https://tools-three-blush.vercel.app
1•avakiyala•20m ago•0 comments

DeepSeek v2: 437x less memory footprint vs. v1 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MImgH4KMtj8
1•mgh2•26m ago•0 comments

Early Bowie music available to stream for first time

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm4gj5z9xvnqo
2•geox•31m ago•0 comments

We Want a Quieter Internet (First Post Internet, Less)

https://www.yorba.co/internet-less/we-want-a-quieter-internet
1•cbystrom•33m ago•0 comments

Japanese mayors challenge each other to nighttime ninja battle, now recruiting

https://soranews24.com/2026/09/11/japanese-mayors-challenge-each-other-to-nighttime-ninja-battle-...
1•rawgabbit•36m ago•0 comments

SHIFTing Languages in Multilingual RAG

https://qdrant.tech/blog/shift-multilingual-rag/
1•eigenBasis•36m ago•0 comments

China Is Scared of A.I. Just Not the Way We Are

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/opinion/ai-china-america-risk.html
1•tkgally•38m ago•0 comments

HEIF Heist- Hacking OpenAI, Slack, Meta, GitHub and Many Others

https://heif-heist.com
2•rochansinha•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WoseApp – a social network where every reply is a private conversation

https://woseapp.com/
1•lukenstine•43m ago•1 comments

The wonder of human made art

http://ageofrust.danieldeboulay.com
1•deboulaymxf•44m ago•0 comments

Liquid Glass adoptions over and100 apps

https://liquidglassradar.com
5•ikmh•47m ago•0 comments

Make an educated guess on Fermi-style trivia questions

https://playdaily.org/fermi
3•emmanator3000•47m ago•0 comments

Jemalloc 5.4.0

https://github.com/jemalloc/jemalloc/releases/tag/5.4.0
2•gkfasdfasdf•50m ago•0 comments

Nowmine

https://signal.nowmine.site/
4•tjjune•57m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why have we normalized jobs and soft skills bullshit so much?

5•thomasjeff1•57m ago•0 comments

The Scourge of x86 Emulation

https://fex-emu.com/Scourge-of-emulation/
3•dagmx•1h ago•0 comments

Ngrx Inspector

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fredyang.ngrx-inspector
2•freddy18•1h ago•0 comments

Reflections on Trusting Trust, Revisited: Poisoning Self-Modifying AI Coding

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.17817
3•sbulaev•1h ago•0 comments

Anderon (IBM) finalizes $1B CHIPS award for US quantum foundry R&D

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-09-16-anderon,-an-ibm-company,-finalizes-agreement-with-the-u-s-dep...
3•osnium123•1h ago•0 comments

A Bitter Lesson for Data Filtering

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19407
5•nujan_dev•1h ago•1 comments

Mojo 1.1: the compiler now accepts contributions

https://www.modular.com/blog/modular-26-6-open-compiler-contributions-audio-generation-and-expand...
3•user142•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Continuity – project state your AI sessions can't silently contradict

https://github.com/vikcena01/ai-continuity-plugin
3•vikcena01•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free Tournament Bracket Maker and Generator

https://snapbracket.com/
3•littlelight•1h ago•0 comments