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.

SpaceX valuation balloons to $2.6T, briefly passes Amazon

https://www.techsentiments.com/article/2026/06/16/spacex-valuation-balloons-to-26t-briefly-passes...
1•rajsuper123•4m ago•0 comments

Mozilla Firefox Usage of Zlib-Rs for Better Safety and Performance

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-Firefox-zlib-rs-Usage
1•Bender•4m ago•0 comments

A Functional Taxonomy of World Models

https://drfeifei.substack.com/p/a-functional-taxonomy-of-world-models
1•doppp•5m ago•0 comments

Entropy

https://arch.dog/bark/entropy
2•Gathering6678•9m ago•1 comments

On Riding Tigers – The Dead Prussian

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/episode-121-on-riding-tigers-the-dead-prussian/id1073235080...
1•GreenSalem•13m ago•0 comments

America's AI Kill Switch Has No Rules – Lawfare

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/06/16/americas-ai-kill-switch-has-no-rules-lawfare/
2•GreenSalem•17m ago•0 comments

The Latest Way BYD Is Topping Tesla

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/16/the-latest-way-byd-is-topping-tesla/
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•17m ago•0 comments

Amazon Faces Billions in Penalties from Potential FTC Ad Suit

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/amazon-faces-billions-in-penalties-from-potent...
4•ilreb•20m ago•0 comments

The Accelerant Effects of AI

https://www.garysieling.com/blog/the-accelerant-effects-of-ai/
2•garysieling•20m ago•0 comments

Argent leviathan of 80.000 WebGL scales

https://sand-morph.up.railway.app/argent-leviathan
2•echohive42•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Startup research website, crunchabse and Product Hunt and grokipedia

https://startupswiki.vercel.app/
3•shpran•26m ago•1 comments

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Errors

https://status.claude.com/incidents/8chgzf3fs27n
2•nsoonhui•29m ago•0 comments

GitHub Copilot plans are now on usage-based billing

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/197089
2•zo1•30m ago•0 comments

The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-cold-wars-accidental-whale-observatory/
2•pseudolus•30m ago•0 comments

Soot from rocket launches is polluting Earth's upper atmosphere

https://physicsworld.com/a/soot-from-rocket-launches-is-polluting-earths-upper-atmosphere/
3•clumsysmurf•36m ago•0 comments

Clutter (Radar)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)
2•teleforce•38m ago•0 comments

Lockheed's new drone built in <12 mths via Divergent Adaptive Production System

https://nextgendefense.com/lockheed-drone-prototype-factory/
2•Gaishan•40m ago•0 comments

Missing scientist's skull reveals new clue about her death

https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15905395/missing-scientist-death-skull-clue-new-mex...
2•Bender•42m ago•0 comments

Book review: Introduction to radar using Python and Matlab [pdf]

https://www.aerosociety.com/media/18681/book-reviews-july-2022.pdf
2•teleforce•44m ago•0 comments

Commodore gets into the phone biz with Sailfish-powered retro 'Callback'

https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/16/commodore-gets-into-the-phone-biz-with-sailf...
2•Bender•44m ago•1 comments

Could AI Supercharge the Government Surveillance Stack?

https://cacm.acm.org/news/could-ai-supercharge-the-government-surveillance-stack/
3•pseudolus•45m ago•0 comments

Purge the Heretek from Our Daemonic Swarm

https://gamecult.org/Blog/purge-the-heretek-from-our-daemonic-swarm
2•pixelbro•47m ago•1 comments

Strait of Hormuz Update: Is It Open? [video][25 Mins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgfuFo7jaEE
2•Bender•49m ago•0 comments

Humans Still Beat AI in the Long Horizon

https://joyemang33.github.io/blog/2026/humans-dont-just-sample/
2•mxwsn•51m ago•0 comments

Anthropic's latest feud with the admin may help it, sales data suggests

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/anthropics-latest-feud-with-the-trump-admin-may-actually-help-i...
3•pseudolus•52m ago•0 comments

2026-06-16 Robinhood Layoff Translation

https://layoff-translator.pages.dev/layoffs/2026-06-16-robinhood
5•ronbenton•59m ago•0 comments

Even if u "delete" it – u still need to crawl it;D

https://rogmash.neocities.org/
2•rogmash•1h ago•0 comments

Hex1bThe .NET Terminal Application Stack

https://hex1b.dev/
2•joshka•1h ago•0 comments

What If Everyone Saw Your Whole Digital Life?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/your-digital-self-is-vulnerable.html
2•gaws•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Would you want to know when and how you die?

4•JohnDSDev•1h ago•6 comments