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The long-term effect of the Cold War on science and technology is more profound than Nena’s 99 Luftbalons, or any Oliver Stone Vietnam flick.

If you are reading this, you’re already using Cold War technology; The Internet. That’s not all. A lot of tech and infrastructure we take for granted was developed, or at least conceived, during these tumultuous decades.

Spotlight search in Apple iOS 9, compared to earlier versions, has been made much more prominent and personal. With suggestions from Siri and integration opportunities for third-party apps, iPhone’s search functionality is no longer limited to the scope of Apple’s own apps. In this article, Toptal engineer Richard Forsythe explores some iOS SDK functionalities that allow apps to make content available to the user via Spotlight search.

Maintainable code is something we all desire and there are no shortage of coding principles that promise it. It is not always apparent how tremendously useful these principles are during the early stages of development. Nonetheless, the effort put in to ensure these qualities certainly pay off as the project grows and development continues. In this article, Toptal engineer Adel Fayzrakhmanov discusses how the Single Responsibility Principle is one of the most important aspect in writing good maintainable code.

Whether you’re creating a virtual storefront, deploying an app, or simply doing some third-party testing and development, chances are you need some server muscle. The good news is that there is a lot to choose from. The hosting industry may not be loud or exciting, but it never sleeps; it’s a dog eat dog world, with cutthroat pricing, a lot of innovation behind the scenes, and cyclical hardware updates.

In this article, we take a look at hosting options for freelance software engineers: PaaS, Cloud, VPS, dedicated, and more.

Using modern DevOps Tools like Chef, Docker, Ansible, Packer, Troposphere, Consul, Jenkins, SonarQube, AWS, etc., does not mean that you are applying DevOps principles. DevOps is a way of thinking.

Rapid prototyping and the ability to produce quick visual results are features of many programming languages and frameworks. However, some take it even further by making these their primary goals. Processing, a programming language based on Java, allows its users to code within the context of visual arts and has been designed from the ground up to provide instant visual feedback. In this article, Toptal engineer Oguz Gelal provides a gentle introduction to Processing and some insights into its inner mechanics.

Apple’s iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 updates brings a number of novel features, including improved multitasking for iPads and a host of aesthetic tweaks. However, while iOS 9 is just an incremental update with a focus on the new iPad Pro, WatchOS 2 is not a skin-deep update. Apple has changed the WatchOS architecture and opened up a range of new possibilities for developers.

Performance and data interoperability are critical to the success of any web application. For web apps that need to support video processing – which is inherently compute- and I/O-intensive – these challenges are particularly acute. In this post, I describe some of my experience successfully incorporating video capabilities into a PHP-based web app, leveraging open source technologies and cloud-based services to the greatest extent possible.

Several factors conspired to stifle Android Wear growth, ranging from lack of Google development, to inadequate hardware. Some of these problems have been addressed, some are being addressed, while others cannot be addressed with currently available technology.

Ruby metaprogramming, one of the most interesting aspects of Ruby, enables the programming language to achieve an extreme level of expressiveness. It is because of this very feature that many gems, such as RSpec and ActiveRecord, can work the way they do. In this article, Toptal engineer Nikola Todorovic demystifies Ruby metaprogramming using some examples that are relevant to everyday programming and aims to bring it closer to average Ruby developers.

The Toptal Global Mentors program is designed to help novice developers around the world improve their skills and create new career opportunities. In our diverse, yet interconnected global industry, cutting-edge skills are always in short supply. The program aims to bridge the gap between skilled software engineers in developed countries and students from across the globe, who aspire to join the industry.