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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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.
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.
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?
Micah Bowers
Micah helps businesses craft meaningful engagement through branding, illustration, and design.
Angular 5/ASP.NET Core: The Best of Both Worlds
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.
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.
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.
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.
Building Trust, Quality, and Integrity on the Internet, at Scale
Learn how Toptal, one of the world’s largest fully remote companies, instills critical cultural elements to scale trust with its distributed team and customers.
Toptal Research
Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, finance experts, and project managers in the world.
Emulating React and JSX in Vanilla JS
Not everybody likes JavaScript frameworks, nor are they always applicable. But even when we don’t want to or can’t use them, there are some parts that are handy to have.
In this tutorial, Toptal Freelance JavaScript Developer Juan Carlos Arias Ambriz proposes a simple way to recapture some of the benefits of using JSX while working in vanilla JS.
Juan Carlos Arias Ambriz
Juan has 10+ years of freelance UX experience. His work is rooted in perfectionism & providing the best experience to user.
M&A Negotiation Tactics and Strategies: Tips From a Pro
Mergers and acquisitions are headline-grabbing events that are often the pinnacle of a CEO’s career. But they also often fail to generate value, as numerous studies over the years have shown.
With over 15 years of experience doing M&A deals, Toptal Finance Expert Javier Enrile shows that the main reason for disappointing results is simple: Most people think M&A is merely an exercise of agreeing on a price for the deal. What they fail to understand is that there is a science to doing M&A that often makes the difference between a deal being successful or not.
In this article, Enrile runs through three key tactics for ensuring your company can get the most value out of an M&A transaction.
Javier Enrile
Javier has 16 years of experience in mid-market M&A and VC, with 35 completed transactions and hundreds of others evaluated and negotiated.
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The History of Remote Work, 1560-Present (with Infographic) (Updated)
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