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.

Why brilliant mathematicians choose coding over research

https://zenodo.org/records/21539087
1•epyre•1m ago•0 comments

OpenAI Is Down Again

https://status.openai.com/incidents/01KYC921K145JTR1JK7DYKGWH1
3•bakigul•3m ago•0 comments

ECB launches survey on the new euro banknotes

https://surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro
2•mnewme•9m ago•0 comments

Elder-plinius – The Fable 5 Showcase

https://github.com/elder-plinius/FABLE-SHOWCASE
1•davedx•9m ago•0 comments

The Rise of the Deserving Rich

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/07/23/the-rise-of-the-deserving-rich
1•NewCzech•9m ago•1 comments

Augmental: MouthPad goes public, and we introduce VOX

https://www.augmental.tech/news/mouthpad-and-vox-launch
1•leoc•12m ago•0 comments

Turning the database inside-out with Apache Samza (2015)

https://martin.kleppmann.com/2015/03/04/turning-the-database-inside-out.html
1•subset•13m ago•0 comments

India's 'Cockroach' Gen Z has had enough

https://www.ft.com/content/ac19e4f4-cf7b-4a75-b591-0ca79ef62d37
1•mraniki•15m ago•0 comments

Why did I buy this domain?

https://poop.bike/
1•edent•17m ago•2 comments

The uops.info Code Analyzer

https://uica.uops.info/
1•csmantle•17m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT Is Down

7•anujbans•19m ago•3 comments

Show HN: AgentState – Open-source resilience and caching proxy for AI agents

https://github.com/aleenz1102/AgentState
1•aijazahm19•21m ago•0 comments

Invaders is back: rescued from a forgotten Bitbucket account

https://www.atomic14.com/2026/07/24/invaders-is-back
1•iamflimflam1•22m ago•0 comments

Codex Is Down

9•freakynit•25m ago•4 comments

Wisprkey – 100% free and local voice typing for Mac

https://www.wisprkey.com
1•RoniHenareh•26m ago•1 comments

FastHTML

https://fastht.ml/
1•tosh•27m ago•1 comments

Show HN: AI codebase analyser and auto-fixer

https://www.getdebug.dev/blog/python-ai-app-prefilters
1•nutifafa•28m ago•0 comments

Supergun affair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergun_affair
1•networked•29m ago•0 comments

Data-Parallel Thinking (2024) [pdf]

https://gfxcourses.stanford.edu/cs149/fall24content/media/dataparallel/08_dataparallel_uvO76Qr.pdf
1•tosh•30m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is neuromorphic computing going to replace traditional AI?

1•lennart-rth•31m ago•0 comments

EU grants US request to restrict satellite images of Iran War region

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/european-union-grants-us-request-to-restrict-satellite-imag...
3•mdp2021•34m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to use agents via API cheaply?

1•thih9•38m ago•3 comments

TiRex-2: Generalizing TiRex to Multivariate Data and Streaming

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01204
1•tosh•39m ago•0 comments

I built a non-physical GPU that does 194,396 yottaflops on one CPU core

https://github.com/pluscoder30-cpu/Omega_Field_GPU_Ultimate
1•soul-vector•41m ago•0 comments

Hardest engineering challenge in post-quantum Bitcoin?

https://github.com/chipcoin-protocol/chipcoin
1•chipcoinchc•42m ago•0 comments

A Natural Experiment in Economics

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/a-natural-experiment-in-economics.html
2•smitty1e•43m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hwatu – verification browser for coding agents (WebKit, one binary)

https://github.com/hongnoul/hwatu
1•hongnoul_•47m ago•0 comments

Show HN: SimTelemetry – SIM Racing Telemetry and Analysis

https://simtelemetry.site
1•ryanxsim•49m ago•0 comments

Case Study: AI Trainer Platform and Job Board [Months 1-6]

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/case-study-ai-trainer-platform-and-job-board-months-1-6-fcb5f25d54
1•interceptor666•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nostalgia – A shareable Windows 98 desktop builder

https://nostalgia-stilloo.zocomputer.io/
1•tsachin•54m ago•0 comments