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.

Unlocking Extreme AMD Instinct Inference with Software-Hardware Co-Optimization

https://rocm.blogs.amd.com/software-tools-optimization/atom-inference-engine/README.html
1•mooreds•1m ago•0 comments

Prototypes Are Free. Proprietary Data Is Priceless

https://www.kpler.com/blog/data-is-still-king
1•mooreds•1m ago•0 comments

Superpowers 6

https://blog.fsck.com/2026/06/15/Superpowers-6/
1•arittr•2m ago•0 comments

Read the Lutnick Letter That Led Anthropic to Disable Mythos

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/read-the-lutnick-letter-that-led-anthropic-to-...
2•lesbarclays•3m ago•0 comments

What Is the Return on Tokens?

https://lesbarclays.substack.com/p/what-is-the-return-of-tokens
1•lesbarclays•5m ago•0 comments

The Perceptual Characteristics of Voice-Hallucinations in Deaf People (2006)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2632268/
1•bryanrasmussen•5m ago•1 comments

Russian Frigate Opens Fire with Warning Shots in the English Channel

https://theaviationist.com/2026/06/16/russian-frigate-opens-fire-with-warning-shots-in-the-englis...
1•speckx•8m ago•0 comments

S‑CURVES a field guide to technology adoption · 1825–2026

https://escurves.com/
1•sapal•10m ago•0 comments

Pentagon reduces reliance on Anthropic, switches to competitors after clash

https://cryptobriefing.com/pentagon-reduces-anthropic-reliance-competitors/
4•devonnull•12m ago•0 comments

Lutnick's Letter to Anthropic Warned of Curbs on Top AI Models

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/lutnick-s-letter-to-anthropic-warned-of-curbs-...
2•airstrike•13m ago•1 comments

The Return of the Energy Transition

https://steelforfuel.substack.com/p/the-return-of-the-energy-transition
1•simonebrunozzi•14m ago•0 comments

Leaked Alleged Text of Trump-Iran Deal

https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/read-leaked-alleged-text-of-trump-iran-deal/
3•cf100clunk•14m ago•1 comments

Hillock – Local, brain-inspired AI memory using SQLite and HDC

https://github.com/roandejager/Hillock
1•roandejager•14m ago•0 comments

Build Your Own Eval Harness from Scratch with Bun and Claude -p

https://alexop.dev/posts/build-your-own-eval-harness-bun-claude-p/
1•speckx•15m ago•0 comments

Claude recursive subagents burning hundreds in extra tokens

https://bsky.app/profile/ed3d.net/post/3moggsr47dk2z
2•belkinpower•15m ago•0 comments

Webview – cross-platform HTML5 UI abstraction layer

https://github.com/webview/webview
1•smartmic•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: VoiceDraw – Talk system design out loud, the diagrams draw themselves

https://voicedraw.com/
3•ajaypanthagani•17m ago•0 comments

Implementing transformative role playing games : full ebook

https://books.uu.se/uup/catalog/book/55
3•bythreads•17m ago•0 comments

Cascading Tree Sitter Queries

https://github.com/jasper-lyons/ctsq
2•iovrthoughtthis•18m ago•1 comments

Ericsson CEO Ekholm to step down, be replaced by Per Narvinger

https://www.reuters.com/business/ericsson-ceo-step-down-be-replaced-by-per-narvinger-2026-06-16/
2•michalhuman•20m ago•0 comments

Is your company affected by NIS2?

https://nisd2.eu/applicability
2•cjhisey•20m ago•0 comments

Canada Is Building a Surveillance State

https://twitter.com/lucyhargreaves4/status/2066903272271544551
5•arrowsmith•21m ago•0 comments

OpalAI Got Two NASA Contracts to Build AI for Wildfire Intelligence

https://www.opal-ai.com
3•opalai•22m ago•0 comments

VTCLab Media Analyzer v0.6.0 is out

https://media-analyzer.pro/blog/posts/2026-06-16-v0.6.0/
2•ksh2u•22m ago•0 comments

MambAdapter: Lightweight Mamba-Based Adapters for Transfer Learning

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.15638
2•MediaSquirrel•23m ago•0 comments

Pyinfra – agentless infrastructure automation, in plain Python

https://pyinfra.com
3•birdculture•23m ago•0 comments

Music Labels Win Canadian Site Blocking Order Against YouTube Downloaders

https://torrentfreak.com/music-labels-win-canadian-site-blocking-order-against-y2mate-ytmp3-and-s...
2•Cider9986•23m ago•0 comments

Apparently the Real Reason Anthropic's Models Are Offline: A Six-Year-Old Grudge

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/16/apparently-the-real-reason-anthropics-models-are-offline-a-si...
4•cdrnsf•25m ago•0 comments

To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)

https://www.gkogan.co/increase-reply-rates/
3•downbad_•29m ago•0 comments

Leviathan Waking – On Anthropic/USG, and a new era in AI governance

https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/leviathan-waking
2•speckx•29m ago•0 comments