frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

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

1•dave2299•9mo 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•9mo 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.

"time to GPT-2", down to 2.91 hours

https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/2018804068874064198
1•tosh•1m ago•0 comments

The Future of Species – are we on the verge of creating synthetic life?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/04/on-the-future-of-species-by-adrian-woolfson-review-...
1•beardyw•4m ago•0 comments

A Zero-Layer Approach to Memory Safety (1:1 IR, No Sandbox)

1•pratyagatma•5m ago•0 comments

Superagent: A Multi-Agent System for Work

https://www.airtable.com/newsroom/introducing-superagent
2•T-A•6m ago•0 comments

How LLMs Scaled from 512 to 2M Context: A Technical Deep Dive

https://amaarora.github.io/posts/2025-09-21-rope-context-extension.html
2•rzk•6m ago•0 comments

Anthropic's launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/03/anthropic-ai-legal-tool-shares-data-services-p...
3•tdchaitanya•8m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Google Play billing flaw allows receipt replay attacks

1•Agoodgirl3232•11m ago•0 comments

Human message request: sharing a brief support request about family in crisis

1•ForestSeeker•12m ago•0 comments

Why Vibe First Development Collapses Under Its Own Freedom

https://techyall.com/blog/why-vibe-first-development-collapses-under-its-own-freedom
1•birdculture•12m ago•0 comments

AVATrade's Credibility – A Fintech Perspective on User-Protection Gaps

1•ReviewShield•15m ago•0 comments

The difference between the CE mark and the China Export mark

https://www.jjcarter.com/news/ce-mark-and-the-china-export-mark
1•tokyobreakfast•17m ago•0 comments

High Performance Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Hosting

1•John_rdpextra•17m ago•0 comments

Most and least expensive US supermarkets

https://www.consumerreports.org/money/prices-price-comparison/most-and-least-expensive-supermarke...
2•MinimalAction•18m ago•0 comments

Organic Maps is working on live public transport schedules

https://fosstodon.org/@organicmaps/116011424160931246
1•sohkamyung•20m ago•0 comments

The Bitcoin Perpetual Motion Machine Is Starting to Sputter

https://slate.com/technology/2026/02/bitcoin-crypto-treasury-wall-street-microstrategy.html
1•decimalenough•21m ago•0 comments

Created a Doom Scrollable HN website in 7 minutes

https://hacker-feed-glance.lovable.app
1•thasaleni•24m ago•1 comments

My Eighth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder

https://mtlynch.io/bootstrapped-founder-year-8/
1•Brajeshwar•26m ago•0 comments

Broken Proofs and Broken Provers

https://lawrencecpaulson.github.io/2026/01/15/Broken_proofs.html
1•RebelPotato•26m ago•0 comments

Proof of Claude Max quota regression

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22435
1•kstenerud•26m ago•2 comments

Price increase on .AI domains by NameCheap

2•hibijibies•27m ago•0 comments

Ktkit: A Kotlin toolkit for building server applications with Ktor

https://github.com/smyrgeorge/ktkit
1•smyrgeorge•29m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Dynamic ROI vs. Tiling for high-speed object tracking (<20ms latency)?

1•LucaHerakles•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bakeoff – Send Your Clawdbots to Work

https://www.bakeoff.app/
2•ohong•33m ago•2 comments

Agent Instructions to Command Humans

https://gist.github.com/matiaso/d8d0ee2f72270256c8e19b258d3704b1
1•aphroz•34m ago•1 comments

Saying "No" in an Age of Abundance

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/saying-no/
1•onurkanbkrc•34m ago•0 comments

Finland is a high-context society that loves defaults

https://rakhim.exotext.com/finland-is-a-high-context-society-that-loves-defaults
2•mefengl•35m ago•0 comments

Fine-tuning open LLM judges to outperform GPT-5.2

https://www.together.ai/blog/fine-tuning-open-llm-judges-to-outperform-gpt-5-2
1•zainhsn•37m ago•0 comments

The Coming AI Compute Crunch

https://martinalderson.com/posts/the-coming-ai-compute-crunch/
1•swolpers•37m ago•0 comments

Marc Andreessen: Defining the Voice of a Startup (2011) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNso4MQlPE
1•walterbell•41m ago•0 comments

A Better Figma MCP: Letting Claude Design

https://cianfrani.dev/posts/a-better-figma-mcp/
1•Ozzie_osman•44m ago•0 comments