Toptal Blog

The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, finance experts, executives, and entrepreneurs, featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.

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Toptal core team members share their experience, expertise, and perspectives on the Toptal Edge Blog

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The Future of Work: A View from Seattle

Major economic forces are shaping the Future of Work. Toptal sits down with executives from Seattle to hear their perspective on topics impacting companies across the US, including the talent gap and the looming threat of disruptive innovation.

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Toptal Research

Toptal Research

Toptal Research

For Founders Raising Capital: Thinking Through the Implications of Convertible Notes

Convertible notes have become an increasingly popular and common method for raising capital by startups, but how well do founders truly understand the implications of going down this route?

In this article, Toptal Finance Expert Jeffrey Briggs outlines the basics of convertible note structures, and runs through the pros and cons of using them to raise money for new entrepreneurial ventures.

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Jeffrey Briggs

Jeffrey Briggs

Jeff is an M&A and VC financing expert, having led three acquisitions and six VC investments at Seagate, a private investment group.

The Present and Future of AI in Design (with Infographic)

AI has become an over-hyped buzzword and the design world is no exception. Instead of resisting it, designers will soon be co-creating with AI. It will make them smarter. (Includes infographic)

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Miklos Philips

Miklos Philips

Miklos is a UX designer, product design strategist, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

Creating a Cryptocurrency in the Crystal Programming Language

Crystal is an up and coming programming language that should appeal to Ruby veterans in demand for more performance and flexibility. It may even be the most promising programming language of 2018.

In this tutorial, Toptal Ruby Developer Eqbal Quran demonstrates how you can harness Crystal’s potential to create your own blockchain and cryptocurrency.

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Eqbal Quran

Eqbal Quran

Eqbal is a senior full-stack developer with more than a decade of experience working in web and mobile development.

A Deep Dive into Reinforcement Learning

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are popular topics, vast domains with multiple paradigms to solve any given challenge.

In this article, Toptal Machine Learning Expert Adam Stelmaszczyk walks us through implementing deep Q-learning, a fundamental algorithm in the AI/ML world, with modern libraries such as TensorFlow, TensorBoard, Keras, and OpenAI Gym.

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Adam Stelmaszczyk

Adam Stelmaszczyk

A PhD candidate specializing in AI and one of Europe’s top tech entrepreneurs, Adam is a team player and active F/OSS contributor.

Icon Usability and Design Best Practices

The ultimate aim of icon design is to enhance the user experience. But what does that look like and how can UI designers ensure that the icons they make will be easily understood?

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Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful engagement through branding, illustration, and design.

Angular 5 and ASP.NET Core

Microsoft and Google have worked together since Angular 2, rendering ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC Razor obsolete. Nevertheless, while ASP.NET’s front-end tools may be lacking, it is still a great back-end framework.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Angular Developer Pablo Albella teaches us how to create the best architecture for both these worlds.

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Pablo Albella

Pablo Albella

Pablo is a talented JavaScript and .NET developer. He successfully created numerous complex products over the past decade.

Real Estate Valuation Using Regression Analysis – A Tutorial

Traditional approaches to valuing real estate can lean towards the qualitative side, relying more on intuition over sound rationale. Linear regression analysis, however, can offer a robust model for using past transactions in an area, to provide better guidance on property valuations.

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Daniel Barr, CFA, CAIA

Daniel Barr, CFA, CAIA

Dan has deep expertise in all CFO functions, having led team of Controllers responsible for over $185 Bn of transactions at Credit Suisse.

Use Your Inspiration – A Guide to Mood Boards

Finding inspiration for design projects is one thing. Organizing it into a cohesive base for creating a design that wows clients and users is an entirely different beast. The solution? Mood boards.

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Cameron Chapman

Cameron Chapman

Cameron comes from a design background and is the author of two web design books: Color for Web Design and The Smashing Idea Book.

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