Toptal Blog

While Rails is easy to use, it is also not hard to misuse. This article looks at 10 common Rails pitfalls, including how to avoid them and the problems that they cause.

For all too many companies, it's not until after a breach has occurred that security becomes a priority. An effective approach to IT security must, by definition, be proactive and defensive. This post focuses on 10 common and significant web-related IT security pitfalls to be aware of, including recommendations on how they can be avoided.

It’s astounding how few business owners properly account for the real cost of their labor. This article presents tried and true methods—including an online calculator—for calculating the real cost of your employees and consultants, enabling you to perform a sound financial analysis when faced with the “employee versus consultant” dilemma.

In this follow-up to his first highly popular AngularJS tutorial, Toptal engineer Raoni Boaventura guides you through the steps of setting up your project, including scaffolding, dependency management, and preparing it for testing.

A year after Google's launch of Polymer, Toptal engineer Alejandro Hernandez takes it out for a test drive to see if it's yet ready for prime time. This post explores the maturity and stability of Polymer.js as a foundation for large-scale application development. The results and conclusions from this analysis are provided, along with an introductory overview of the technology.

Python's simple, easy-to-learn syntax can mislead Python developers -- especially those who are newer to the language -- into missing some of its subtleties and underestimating the power of the language. In this article, Toptal's Martin Chikilian presents a "top 10" list of somewhat subtle, harder-to-catch mistakes that can trip up even the most advanced Python developer.

JavaScript is much more nuanced than most developers initially realize. Even for those with more experience, some of JavaScript's most salient features continue to be misunderstood and lead to confusion. One such feature, described in this article, is the way that property and variable lookups are performed and the resulting performance ramifications to be aware of.

C# is a powerful and flexible language with many mechanisms and paradigms that can greatly improve productivity. Having a limited understanding or appreciation of its capabilities, though, can leave one in the proverbial state of “knowing enough to be dangerous”. This article describes 10 of the most common programming mistakes made, or pitfalls to be avoided, by C# programmers.

Once you step beyond the comfortable confines of English-only character sets, you quickly find yourself entangled in the wonderfully wacky world of UTF-8. Indeed, navigating through UTF-8 related issues can be a frustrating and hair-pulling experience. This post provides a concise cookbook for addressing these issues when working with PHP and MySQL in particular, based on practical experience and lessons learned.