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.

WebFPGA

https://webfpga.io/
1•gurjeet•3m ago•0 comments

Games look real now. We're in the future

https://twitter.com/r00t404t/status/2094871766304751799
1•razodactyl•3m ago•0 comments

Yume – A game launcher for PC and emulators

https://komorebidesigns.dev/
1•DevRen•4m ago•1 comments

FixMonorepo – Fix a monorepo by splitting it into single-file repos

https://github.com/twigg-vc/fixmonorepo
1•andrebianchessi•6m ago•0 comments

mst3k-anything

https://github.com/jgbrwn/mst3k-anything
1•indigodaddy•9m ago•0 comments

How is AWS console so broken?

1•anuptalwalkar•12m ago•0 comments

Testing Grok 4.6's Enhanced Biology Safeguards

https://blog.latch.bio/p/analyzing-grok46-safeguards
1•fourfire•15m ago•0 comments

Shopify's agent-commerce category filter didn't filter on any of 190 stores

https://shelfglance.com/research/ucp-category-filter
1•BruceM2007•19m ago•0 comments

Conduct react interviews with a shared coding workspace

https://www.reactpair.com/
1•vijayst•20m ago•0 comments

Huawei Became China's Nvidia [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbq4wrZn-DI
1•deterministic•21m ago•0 comments

B.C. boaters warned to avoid mysterious floating island

https://cheknews.ca/b-c-boaters-warned-to-avoid-mysterious-floating-island-1345202/
2•ehxor•23m ago•0 comments

XGBoost from Scratch

https://randomrealizations.com/posts/xgboost-from-scratch/
2•auraham•26m ago•0 comments

High-performance lossless floating-point compression in pure Rust

https://crates.io/crates/fastalp
2•rmw-link•30m ago•0 comments

Contest announcement – Build on BareMetal Cloud Sep 7-20

https://returninfinity.com/blog/sep2026-build-on-baremetal-contest
1•varunmadhokRetI•39m ago•1 comments

OpenRCT on GitHub Pages

https://atapifire.github.io/OpenRCT2-Web/
1•websim_api•39m ago•0 comments

Another Tesla on Autopilot Stopped on Freeway, Driver Died: Report

https://gizmodo.com/another-telsa-on-autopilot-stopped-on-freeway-driver-died-report-2000805742
4•kamaraju•41m ago•4 comments

AI Made Writing Code Free. It Made Reading Code Expensive

https://medium.com/c-sharp-programming/ai-made-writing-code-free-it-made-reading-code-expensive-e...
2•sukhpinder0804•44m ago•0 comments

RollerCoaster Tycoon Needs Early Access Users

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4734550/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_Wonderworks/
3•kamphey•46m ago•0 comments

A Bicycle for the Mind

https://pulkomandy.tk/_/_Life/_A%20bicycle%20for%20the%20mind
1•vinhnx•46m ago•0 comments

Aviation Herald sued; editor forced to sell home of 40y and move into his office

https://avherald.com/h?article=53c8958a
3•gnuplustoejam•50m ago•0 comments

One in three AI scribe notes carries a verified clinical error

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.31017
2•sbulaev•51m ago•1 comments

Command and Conquer Series Retrospective (4.5 Hours) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwZelaQ78c
1•nomilk•52m ago•0 comments

Russian Sanctions Are Fueling a Canadian Car Theft Epidemic

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/world/canada/canada-car-theft-russia-sanctions.html
3•lxm•59m ago•0 comments

life hacks in devil daggers and general yap about homing timings [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqMEnSWjrCs
3•lelandfe•1h ago•0 comments

Fake Books (2022)

https://blog.coredump.cx/p/fake-books
1•surround•1h ago•0 comments

Open Source X Algorithm Integrates First Public Contribution

https://github.com/xai-org/x-algorithm/pull/55
3•nomilk•1h ago•1 comments

Piloting the first double-blind AI evaluations

https://deepmind.google/blog/piloting-the-worlds-first-double-blind-ai-evaluations/
1•williamtrask•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Markdown Gatekeeper – one current source per topic for AI agents

https://github.com/nanlogic/markdown-gatekeeper
3•sacravenger•1h ago•0 comments

TrackerControl for Android

https://trackercontrol.org/
2•uoaei•1h ago•0 comments

What we've learned building cloud agents

https://cursor.com/blog/cloud-agent-lessons
1•shenli3514•1h ago•0 comments