Toptal Blog

The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, management consultants, 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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Creating an Immersive Fan Experience for a Global Sports Audience

Learn how the 2016 NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers use technology to engage their global fan base.

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Toptal Research

Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, management consultants, and project managers in the world.

Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio: Quiet Pioneer of Big Data, Machine Learning, and Fintech

Ray Dalio is an investing legend whose success is most often attributed to investment acumen. This article argues that it was equally due to his foresight as an early but quiet adopter of computational systems, big data techniques, and artificial intelligence that resulted in his outstanding success. Bridgewater was one of the world’s earliest fintech companies.

15-minute readContinue Reading
Orinola Gbadebo-Smith

Orinola Gbadebo-Smith

Ori an investor cum entrepreneur with experience across M&A, PE, VC and startup operations. He most recently founded a VC-backed startup.

Future UI Design Without Buttons

Why do we still use buttons in our user interfaces? Technology has come so far and offers so many possibilities, there is no longer any reason to force our users to click the tiny rectangles we call “buttons.”

6-minute readContinue Reading
Wojciech Dobry

Wojciech Dobry

Wojciech is a product designer and web designer with eight years of experience. He’s passionate about typography and sound design.

How to Implement a Pixel-perfect iOS UI Design

In this article, Toptal Freelance Developer Roman Stetsenko explains what it takes to create a pixel-perfect iOS interface from the ground up and why it matters.

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Roman Stetsenko

Roman Stetsenko

Roman is a mobile app developer with deep expertise in building pixel-perfect products for iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. He brings a mathematical mindset and sharp UX instincts to every project, from MVPs for companies like Duolingo to complex apps featuring advanced animation and sensor integration. His meticulous approach ensures elegant, high-performance interfaces and scalable architecture.

Android and iOS UI Testing with Calabash

Do you think testing your iOS or Android apps manually is faster than writing automated tests for them? Calabash, the cross-platform acceptance framework, busts that myth once and for all.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Alexander Gedevanishvili shows how Calabash, with its support for Cucumber, makes writing automated UI tests as simple as writing instructions in plain English.

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Alexander Gedevanishvili

Alexander Gedevanishvili

Alexander is an accomplished full-stack developer with more than a decade of experience. He is passionate about mobile development.

Dark UIs. The Good and the Bad. Dos and Don’ts.

Dark-themed UIs can be dramatic, stylish, and elegant. But despite the many benefits, they come with a slew of challenges and potential pitfalls that every designer would be wise to keep in mind.

8-minute readContinue Reading
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 Truly Modular Code With No Dependencies

Complex, tightly-coupled, and fragile interdependent code. We’ve all written it. The kind of code where fixing one bug creates seven more. Have you ever wondered how to create independent modular code?

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Konrad Gadzinowski walks us through the different types of architectural paradigms you can adhere to and how to write modular and decoupled code where changes to one module have minimal impact on the overall application.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Konrad Gadzinowski

Konrad Gadzinowski

Konrad specializes in creating modular, full-stack web applications that are easy to extend. His main expertise is Java and JavaScript.

Great Recent Examples of Competitive Strategy Successes

Competitive strategy frameworks are widely known and mainstays of university curricula, despite being almost 40 years old. We often hear the stories of Walmart and Southwest Airlines, but what modern competitive strategy examples are there? In this article we use Michael Porter’s activity positioning framework to show successful applications of competitive strategy from modern digital companies.

12-minute readContinue Reading
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Adobe XD vs. Sketch – Which UX Tool Is Right for You?

After years without a dedicated UX tool and the space owned by Sketch, InVision, and Figma, Adobe started developing XD. Let’s look at XD and how it compares with Sketch, the market’s dominant choice.

5-minute readContinue Reading
Sérgio Estrella

Sérgio Estrella

With a decade of experience in UI/UX, Sérgio has worked in a wide range of industries such as education, enterprise, and entertainment.

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