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.

FlashAttention-T: Towards Tensorized Attention

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3774934.3786425
1•matt_d•1m ago•0 comments

Sinofsky to Epstein on Cook and Forstall

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/02/03/sinofsky-on-cook-and-forstall/
1•bangonkeyboard•1m ago•0 comments

Scaling GPU-to-CPU Migration for Efficient Distributed Execution on CPU Clusters

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3774934.3786435
1•matt_d•1m ago•0 comments

Nintendo Switch is the second-bestselling game console ever, behind only the PS2

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/original-nintendo-switch-passes-the-ds-to-become-nintendo...
1•pjmlp•2m ago•0 comments

Quantum Fiber is now part of the AT&T family

https://privatebin.seattlematrix.org/?ca8e9aea4f427a17#DRk6xTUwk2UrhmUUXwyJA3CKYrhTQCjWxrW3yo5RysRp
1•aendruk•3m ago•1 comments

this is me

https://twitter.com/trq212/status/2018742219424059439
1•tosh•4m ago•0 comments

Diversification Across Time [pdf]

https://ianayres.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Diversification%20Across%20T%20ime(1).pdf
1•baxtr•4m ago•0 comments

Stay Away from My Screen

https://github.com/aeilot/stay-away-from-my-screen
1•aeilot•6m ago•0 comments

MetaAttention: A Unified&Performant Attention Framework across Hardware Backends

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3774934.3786444
1•matt_d•7m ago•0 comments

Free as in Burned Out: Who Pays for Open Source? [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/L3BK7S-free-as-in-burned-out/
1•pjmlp•8m ago•0 comments

Documentation is more than you think

https://yanthomas.dev/articles/documentation-is-more-than-you-think/
1•coloneltcb•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Scrape (auto-discover APIs or HTML) & Monitor changes on any site

https://github.com/reverse/meter-sdk
1•chadwebscraper•9m ago•0 comments

Good Engineering Managers Don't Leave the Technology Behind

https://www.jacobmarks.com/2026/02/managing-vs-developing-software.html
1•J8K357R•9m ago•0 comments

A Protester, the White House and a Doctored Photo

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/nekima-levy-armstrong-minnesota-protest.html
1•ripe•9m ago•0 comments

Securing Transactions in a Trust-less world

https://bryonyoni.substack.com/p/securing-transactions-in-a-trust
1•bryonyoni•10m ago•0 comments

Information Is Beautiful

https://informationisbeautiful.net/
2•surprisetalk•11m ago•0 comments

Nature Became a 'Prestige' Journal

https://www.asimov.press/p/nature
3•surprisetalk•11m ago•0 comments

Good Old Days: Classic games and more

https://www.goodolddays.net/
3•surprisetalk•11m ago•0 comments

Tractor

https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/tractor.html
1•surprisetalk•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Reimplementing PyTorch from scratch (MLP, CNN) to learn the internals

https://github.com/geyuxu/nn-from-scratch
1•geyuxu•13m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF

2•eon01•14m ago•0 comments

A Dilettate's Philosophy of Mind

https://mtmason.com/a-dilettantes-philosophy-of-mind/
1•aerodog•15m ago•0 comments

Trump's UAE Chip Deal Is a National Security Risk

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-02/trump-s-uae-chip-deal-is-a-national-securit...
3•voxadam•16m ago•1 comments

Iran's Internet Blackout is Unprecedented [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A-efKY-bDw
2•us321•16m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Is Cursor still working for you?

2•ezulabs•16m ago•0 comments

Does Intermittent Fasting Live Up to the Hype?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/well/eat/intermittent-fasting.html
1•doener•21m ago•0 comments

2 days left to comment on DOT's plan to hike US fuel costs by $23B

https://electrek.co/2026/02/02/2-days-left-to-comment-on-dots-plan-to-hike-us-fuel-costs-by-23b/
2•Bender•24m ago•0 comments

Released: Ace-Step 1.5: Pushing the Boundaries of Open-Source Music Generation

https://ace-step.github.io/ace-step-v1.5.github.io/
1•4chandaily•24m ago•1 comments

Dual N-Back

https://gwern.net/dnb-faq
1•aggrrrh•25m ago•0 comments

FERC: Renewables made up 88% of new US power generating capacity to Nov 2025

https://electrek.co/2026/02/02/ferc-renewables-power-generating-capacity-to-nov-2025/
4•Bender•25m ago•0 comments