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•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.

Krabby: Making a Fast Rust Compiler

https://bal-e.org/speed/krabby/
2•birdculture•4m ago•0 comments

OpenClaw Had a Rough Week

https://openclaw.ai/blog/openclaw-rough-week
3•kevincortes•5m ago•0 comments

China's youth are ditching the rat race

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/06/china/china-spies-lying-flat-intl-hnk
2•rawgabbit•5m ago•1 comments

Local autonomous security agent powered by Qwen 2.5-7B on Kali Linux

https://github.com/XENOCOREGIGER31/local-model
2•automajicly•11m ago•0 comments

Model-Harness-Fit

https://nicolasbustamante.com/blog/model-harness-fit
2•azhenley•15m ago•0 comments

Canvas (Instructure) LMS Down in Ongoing Ransomware Attack

https://www.theverge.com/tech/926458/canvas-shinyhunters-breach
4•stefanpie•15m ago•0 comments

Hackers deface school login pages after claiming another Instructure hack

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/hackers-deface-school-login-pages-after-claiming-another-instru...
5•Veiled•23m ago•1 comments

AWS gives AI agents wallets to pay for APIs and web content

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/agents-that-transact-introducing-amazon-bedrock-age...
5•logickkk1•27m ago•0 comments

Canvas hack shuts down operations at UW-Madison, worldwide

https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2026/05/canvas-hack-shuts-down-operations-at-uw-madison-wor...
3•isaacdl•29m ago•0 comments

Why Don't Lowercase Letters Come Right After Uppercase Letters in ASCII?

https://tylerhillery.com/blog/why-dont-lowercase-chars-come-after-upper/
5•alpaylan•31m ago•0 comments

How a Congressional Primary Became a Proxy Battle over A.I.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/how-a-congressional-primary-became-a-prox...
3•mitchbob•33m ago•1 comments

Aztec Codex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_codex
2•soupspaces•35m ago•0 comments

RNA-triggered cell killing with CRISPR-Cas12a2

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10466-y
2•manuelr-t•36m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Disputron – AI small claims court for petty disputes

https://disputron.ai
3•etaheri•38m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Built a Public Journal for Builders

https://joinserendipity.co/
3•ldang•41m ago•1 comments

US launches new strikes on Iran

https://www.ft.com/content/21131ff4-35e1-4e5c-b827-1e07c9153e8e
10•JumpCrisscross•42m ago•1 comments

French prosecutors seek charges against Musk/X over child sexual abuse images

https://apnews.com/article/france-x-grok-deepfakes-child-sexual-abuse-charges-cac04b1869201bb4c9d...
3•afavour•44m ago•0 comments

Cybercrime group crashes Penn's Canvas system

https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/05/penn-canvas-shinythunters-data-breach-hack-second
3•bgschulman31•47m ago•0 comments

Family Deserves a Lasting Legacy

https://kleinlegacywealth.pro/
2•misterthp•47m ago•0 comments

Not fight, flight or freeze, but fawn

https://psyche.co/notes-to-self/not-fight-flight-or-freeze-this-is-what-fawning-looks-like
3•herbertl•47m ago•0 comments

blink-dev: Intent to Ship: Prompt API

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/iR6R7-nQeHI?pli=1
2•xg15•48m ago•0 comments

We built autoresearch for browser agents

https://www.browserbase.com/blog/autobrowse
2•Kylejeong21•49m ago•0 comments

Show HN: No More Deepfakes – A Ramanujan 1/π and Nvidia B200 Architecture

https://zenodo.org/records/20065581
2•Prakash_1•49m ago•0 comments

Left-Right Handedness Asymmetry in Snail Shells (2004)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982204005901
2•bookofjoe•50m ago•0 comments

My Claude dreams at night and remembers everything. Better than mempalace

https://github.com/CodeAbra/iai-mcp
2•CodeAbra•50m ago•0 comments

Fire at Dutch NorthC data center, all personnel evacuated in time

https://www.techzine.eu/news/infrastructure/141131/fire-at-northc-data-center-all-personnel-evacu...
3•notorandit•51m ago•1 comments

What do AI based layoffs say about their ability to scale?

https://www.elliotcsmith.com/what-do-ai-based-layoffs-say-about-tam/
2•smitec•53m ago•0 comments

How many of us are evaling our skills?

https://github.com/BintzGavin/apastra
2•GavinBintz•53m ago•0 comments

Attacking your competitors online is dumb

https://posthog.com/blog/why-attacking-competitors-is-dumb
3•herbertl•57m ago•0 comments

Reality emerges: What is the Universe made of?

https://aeon.co/essays/why-reality-is-more-than-the-sum-of-its-particles
2•herbertl•1h ago•0 comments