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.

Human Canaries: Remembering the Munitionettes

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/great-debates/human-canaries-remembering-munitionettes
1•Thevet•3m ago•0 comments

Long term memory cortex for agents that maintains tensions

https://github.com/mavaali/daftari
1•mavaali•5m ago•0 comments

ETTrace: Local Mobile Performance Flamegraph

https://www.emergetools.com/flamegraph
1•gmays•7m ago•0 comments

Zig creator calls Bun's Claude Rust rewrite 'unreviewed slop'

https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/07/14/zig-creator-calls-buns-claude-rust-rewrite-unreview...
2•joebuckwilliams•9m ago•0 comments

Tachyon: An AI Screen-Aware Tutor

https://heybraza.com
1•orakulus•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: FixBugs – Reproduce production bugs and verify fixes

https://fixbugs.ai
1•kirtivr•13m ago•0 comments

Deceptive Grounding: Entity Attribution Failure in Clinical RAG

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.09349
1•sbulaev•14m ago•0 comments

What are Forward Deployed Engineers, and why are they so in demand? (2025)

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-deployed-engineers
2•saisrirampur•17m ago•1 comments

UBS Global Wealth Report 2026 [pdf]

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/global-wealth-report-en-2026.pdf
2•karakoram•19m ago•0 comments

Cursor Forgets What You Did 20 Minutes Ago. So I Built a System to Fix That

https://medium.com/powermindai/cursor-kept-forgetting-what-we-talked-about-20-minutes-ago-so-i-bu...
1•taylorazul-ai•19m ago•0 comments

Falling Behind: How Skills Shortages Threaten Future Jobs [pdf]

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/cew-falling_behind-fr.pdf
1•toomuchtodo•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Context Warp Drive – deterministic, zero-LLM context compaction

https://github.com/dogtorjonah/context-warp-drive
1•Dr_Jonah•23m ago•0 comments

Overhauled Homelab

https://timharek.no/blog/kaizen-4/
1•birdculture•24m ago•0 comments

Alarm over launch of facial recognition in UK shops that instantly alerts police

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/10/facewatch-facial-recognition-uk-shops-instantl...
3•cheschire•25m ago•0 comments

Dependency analytics 1.0: AI coding with supply chain security

https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/07/07/dependency-analytics-10-ai-coding-supply-chain-...
1•crashpn•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sx 2.0 – Share AI skills with your team through a Dropbox folder

https://sleuth-io.github.io/sx/2026/07/10/your-dropbox-is-now-a-skill-server.html
1•detkin•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ContextVault – Shared memory layer for your AI and your team

https://www.contextvault.dev/
2•Repeater22746•34m ago•0 comments

Estimating the heights of New Yorkers from their scuff marks

https://blog.jse.li/posts/smith9street/
1•eat_veggies•34m ago•1 comments

Fight Fire with Pedantry

https://commaok.xyz/ai/llm-language/
1•Matrixik•36m ago•0 comments

Private, offline-first notes for people who write Markdown,and code

https://github.com/dsbitor/technotes-releases/
1•ITORDB•39m ago•0 comments

The AI Whale Fall and Open Source

https://minor.gripe/posts/2026-07-13-the_ai_whalefall_and_open_source/
2•ai_critic•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Taetype – a complete font engine for Rust and WASM

https://github.com/silly-tae/taetype
2•silly-tae•43m ago•0 comments

An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2drrv6q54o
7•1659447091•44m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free API of 248M aggregated VEX statements: 45% of CVEs not affected

https://getreel.dev/vex
1•simoneree•49m ago•0 comments

Cdbx.ai – AI-powered browser IDE to describe, build, and publish apps

https://cdbx.ai/
3•chbutler•49m ago•1 comments

When a Web Developer Holds Your Domain Hostage

https://www.dnaccess.com/held-for-ransom-recovering-domain-name/
1•bhartzer•50m ago•0 comments

Leantime: Project management, built with ADHD, Autism, and dyslexia in mind

https://github.com/Leantime/leantime
1•nateb2022•52m ago•0 comments

I Bought the $3k Fitness Suit That Electrocutes You. I'm Sending It Back

https://www.404media.co/i-bought-the-3-000-fitness-suit-that-electrocutes-you-im-sending-it-back/
3•ValentineC•52m ago•2 comments

NASA's Hubble Discovers First of Star Cluster's Missing Black Holes

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-discovers-first-of-star-clusters-missing-bl...
3•Jimmc414•56m ago•0 comments

Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1931)

https://fermatslibrary.com/s/economic-possibilities-for-our-grandchildren
1•mustaphah•1h ago•1 comments