Toptal Blog

Recently, I was challenged to create my own grid system and, since re-inventing the wheel is always useful as a learning experience, I went for it. I knew it would be an interesting challenge, but I was surprised by how easy it turned out to be!

The private equity industry is showing signs of maturity as record competition amongst funds and record-high levels of dry powder, combined with strong competition from cash-rich corporates, have driven valuations to levels that make it difficult to see how returns could remain competitive.

Interaction design principles form the bedrock of awesome UX. Truly great interaction design relies on a set of conventions, standards, best practices and rules-of-thumb.

There is no way around application diagnostics. No matter how good your code is, you will need to be able to monitor and study system behavior. This is where Android’s DDMS shines.

In this article, Senior Android Engineer Gilad Haimov explains how veteran Android developers leverage the potential of DDMS to improve app stability and performance, test new features, diagnose, and debug their code.

Elijah Windsor, a Toptal Software Engineer, shares his take on the key benefits that convince top talent to freelance.

Why does a React web app run slow? The answer often lies in when and how frequently your components re-render, and whether those re-renders were even necessary. React doesn’t promise magical performance gains, but it provides just the right tools and functionalities to make it easy.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer William Wang walks us through some optimization techniques that can help you build performant React web apps.

The relationship between art and design is often misunderstood, and although a design outcome can be artful, the process behind it is altogether very different.

Social networks are among the biggest sources of data today, and this means they are an extremely valuable asset for marketers, big data specialists, and even individual users like journalists and other professionals. Harnessing the potential of real-time Twitter data is also useful in many time-sensitive business processes.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Hanee’ Medhat explains how you can build a simple Python application to leverage the power of Apache Spark, and then use it to read and process tweets to identify trending hashtags.

When looking to sell your business, you will want to maximize its value through a combination of planning and timing. This article runs through some of the most important considerations to keep in mind when preparing for a sale.