Toptal Blog

Since programmers spend so much time using their favorite editor, they become extremely good at it, and are reluctant to learn to use any other. Even if offered a better editor for some specific task, the skilled programmer can get their existing editor to do the task just well enough, and therefore sees no need to learn how to use a new one. This is what compelled me to try out a number of different editors and make the transition as easy as possible; I hope my experience saves you time and effort if you find yourself in the same situation.

When entering the remote developers’ world, the biggest obstacle that managers must overcome is to change their mindset by accepting that the developer will not be in plain sight, and where they can manage and follow the work being done. This new paradigm requires businesses to implement a number of mechanisms to track progress and avoid a redundant workload. Such mechanisms will help both manager and developer be more productive, which is in everyone’s best interest.

Making your own maps is not a big undertaking anymore, but for developers not familiar with web mapping, the agony of choice might be intimidating. You want to make maps, but don't know where to start nor which tools to use. I am here to help. Here, I'll discuss several of the best available tools, providing a brief overview of each, along with code examples, and weighing the pros and cons.

Java, a sophisticated programming language, has been dominating a number of ecosystems for quite a while. Portability, automated garbage collection, and its gentle learning curve are some of the things that make it a great choice in software development. However, like any other programming language, it is still susceptible to developer mistakes. This article explores the top 10 common mistakes Java developers make and some ways of avoiding them.

Toptal engineer Jurgens du Toit looks at the possibility of using Logstash to regain control of your inbox and make your error emails manageable again, all without changing a single thing in your app. Logstash can effectively leverage the power of Elasticsearch and Amazon SNS to streamline email notifications and save time.

Although the most wide-spread and supported way of running Django is on a Linux system (e.g., with uwsgi and nginx), it actually doesn't take much work to get it to run on IIS. In this article, Toptal Engineer Ivan Voras walks you through a step-by-step tutorial, clearly explaining how to install Django on IIS.

A business rules engine is a tool for executing business rules. Business rules are composed of facts and conditional statements. Any “if-then” statement that appears in traditional business logic qualifies as a business rule.

The Internet is becoming “smarter” every day. The video-sharing website that you frequently visit seems to know exactly what you will like, even before you have seen it. The online shopping cart holding your items almost magically figures out the one thing that you may have missed or intended to add before checking out. It’s as if these web services are reading your mind - or are they? Turns out, predicting a user’s likes involves more math than magic. In this article we will explore one of the many ways of building a recommendation engine that is both simple to implement and understand.

A thorough and practical introduction to concurrent and parallel programming in Ruby, presenting and contrasting a number of techniques and options available, from the standpoints of both performance and complexity. Discusses forking, multithreading, the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), and more.