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.

Hot take: AI peaked with Taco Bot 3000

https://danq.me/2026/09/09/tacobot-peak-ai/
1•speckx•49s ago•0 comments

Terence Tao on Navier-Stokes progress

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/finite-time-blowup-with-smooth-forcing-term-for-the-inc...
1•j-bu•1m ago•0 comments

Go Slow to Go Fast

https://spiffworks.substack.com/p/make-haste-slowly
1•danfunk•2m ago•1 comments

Moonshot Routed User Requests Through Claude, Anthropic Says

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-10/moonshot-secretly-routed-user-requests-through...
1•sbulaev•3m ago•0 comments

Dioxus Labs (YC S23) Is Joining Cognition

https://dioxuslabs.com/blog/joining-cognition/
1•ninjha•4m ago•1 comments

The Best Sandwich in Every State (2021)

https://www.foodandwine.com/travel/restaurants/best-sandwich-america-every-state
1•mooreds•5m ago•0 comments

Don't Get in a Crash in a Cybercab

https://schwarztech.net/snippets/dont-get-in-a-crash-in-a-cybercab
2•speckx•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: PromptSign – Sigstore signing and verification for AI instruction files

https://promptsign.ai/
1•sergey_v•7m ago•0 comments

The Magic Behind Cubacadabra

https://andrewarrow.dev/2026/moon/2/day/19/the-magic-behind-cubacadabra/
2•andrewfromx•8m ago•0 comments

AgentLaws – Govern Agents Through Prompts Organized Like Law

https://github.com/shrsv/AgentLaws
1•atomicnature•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Raiders at the Gate – tower defense web game

https://games.chrisbeach.co.uk/raiders-at-the-gate/
2•cbeach•14m ago•1 comments

In search of the hypothetical iPhone Duo buyer

https://manualdousuario.net/en/iphone-duo-who-buys-foldable-phones/
1•rpgbr•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ecommerce Search comparisson across 5 independent engines, all public

https://github.com/quissly/search-benchmark
1•tazo-lezhava•15m ago•1 comments

Custom AMOLED Wearable Makes Great Icebreaker

https://www.scd31.com/posts/defcon-choker
1•SamuraiLion•17m ago•0 comments

What Happened at the White House That Marc Andreessen Says Sent Him to Trump

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/09/10/marc-andreessen-trump-biden-ai-opinion-01045516
3•mmayberry•17m ago•1 comments

Linus's Law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law
1•gchamonlive•17m ago•1 comments

Study: A burst of "pink noise" may lead to more restorative sleep

https://news.mit.edu/2026/pink-noise-burst-may-mean-more-restorative-sleep-0909
2•giuliomagnifico•17m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT for Financial Services

https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-financial-services/
1•skogstokig•19m ago•1 comments

Life as a Terrorist: Uncovering my FBI file (2013)

https://harpers.org/archive/2013/09/life-as-a-terrorist/
2•cocacola1•19m ago•0 comments

Mischievous AIs

https://www.strangeintelligence.ai/mischievous-ais
2•randomparticlez•19m ago•0 comments

Study confirms permanent loss of Canada's last Arctic epishelf lake

https://news.ubc.ca/2026/09/study-confirms-permanent-loss-of-canadas-last-arctic-epishelf-lake/
1•rdmuser•23m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Biff 2.0 (Clojure web framework)

https://biffweb.com
1•jacobobryant•24m ago•0 comments

X-HBM – 16X more bandwidth or 10x higher density than traditional HBM (2025) [pdf]

https://neosemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/X-HBM_Brochure.pdf
1•peter_d_sherman•25m ago•0 comments

Oslo bans smart glasses in schools

https://www.thelocal.no/20260910/oslo-bans-smart-glasses-in-schools
3•vinni2•26m ago•0 comments

How do you keep up HN post with more than 2K comments?

1•pablogancharov•26m ago•3 comments

An Engineer's Guide to Surviving a Layoff

https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-to-survive-a-layoff
1•Brajeshwar•27m ago•0 comments

Stabilization Progress of Rust Allocators

https://cetra3.github.io/blog/state-of-allocators-2026-part-2/
1•fanf2•28m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Would you pay to have your favorite AI agents in one app?

1•balgeman•28m ago•0 comments

What Comes After Git

https://ersc.io/blog/what-comes-after-git
9•steveklabnik•28m ago•0 comments

Bad Vibes Coding

https://spectrecollie.com/2026/09/05/bad-vibes-coding/
1•BrunoBernardino•29m ago•0 comments