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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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The Salesforce Release Train: A Practical Approach to Release Management

Deploying new features with Salesforce can be problematic in more ways than one. It is crucial to have a sound strategy governing the publication of new releases, without running the risk of breaking your product.

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Ajinkya Deshmukh will provide you with all relevant information and key tips that will allow you to manage your next Salesforce release smoothly.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Ajinkya Deshmukh

Ajinkya Deshmukh

Ajinkya is a senior Salesforce developer and architect. He is skilled at advanced Apex programming, Visualforce, and Lightning development.

What is the Border Adjustment Tax? Potential Benefits and Risks

With tax reform discussions likely to rise to the national forefront, this article provides analysis regarding border adjustment taxes and the recent House proposal. It assesses economic implications and historical comparisons to help you understand how you and your business might be impacted.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Melissa Lin

Melissa Lin

Melissa has worked in ECM, tech startups, and management consulting, advising Fortune 500 companies across multiple sectors.

Magento 2 Tutorial: How to Build a Complete Module

Magento built a reputation as an e-commerce market leader, all thanks to its ease of use and customizability. Getting into the framework was only made easier with the release of Magento 2.

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Gabriel Queiroz Silva gives us a step-by-step tutorial to building your first Magento 2 website.

28-minute readContinue Reading
Gabriel Queiroz Silva

Gabriel Queiroz Silva

Gabriel is a certified Magento developer who writes clean code and follows best practices, and he is also an experienced PHP developer.

Maintain Slim PHP MVC Frameworks with a Layered Structure

Fat controllers and models: an inevitable problem for most large-scale projects based on MVC frameworks such as Yii and Laravel. Fortunately, there’s a cure, and it’s in architecting a layered structure.

9-minute readContinue Reading
Elvira Sheina

Elvira Sheina

Elvira is a senior software engineer with nearly 15 years of experience in full-stack web development and automation.

Power Pivot for Excel Tutorial: Top Use Cases and Examples

With the arrival and growing ubiquity of big data, Excel, as a data-mining and processing tool has been pushed to its limits—reflected in its dated 1,048,576 row hard limit and the application’s processing speed slowing to a crawl. As of 2010, Microsoft released a Power Pivot function that transformed the scope and usefulness of Excel where the extraction, combination, and analysis of large datasets are concerned.

Using live cases, Management Consultant Ellen Su explores in detail how to master Power Pivot and explores its hidden advantages as a big data tool.

17-minute readContinue Reading
Ellen Su

Ellen Su

Ellen’s extensive experience in fixed income trading and portfolio management make her an unparalleled expert in analytics and modeling.

How to Conduct Usability Testing in Six Steps

User testing is easy and inexpensive and will substantially improve product designs. The insights gained from observing how people use a digital product are well worth it, as outlined in this six-step process.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Jan Roose

Jan Roose

Jan is a product and UX designer who specializes in AI, mobile and web apps, and gaming. He has built innovative digital products for more than 50 organizations, including Coca Cola, Foxconn, and Bang and Olufsen.

How to Build a Natural Language Processing App

Natural language is increasingly becoming a viable way of interacting with smart software. Google search, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, etc. are all capable of understanding queries in natural language.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Shanglun (Sean) Wang walks us through some useful concepts and techniques in natural language processing and shows how they can be used to build a simple NLP app.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Shanglun Wang

Shanglun Wang

Sean is a passionate polyglot: A full-stack wizard, sys admin, and data scientist. He’s also developed market intelligence software.

SaaS Pricing Models: Pricing Strategy Examples and Best Practices

Pricing strategy is one of the most important financial levers that companies have at their disposal to influence the financial success of their business. However, it is not an easy task. This article analyzes SaaS software pricing strategies and finds that several of the operational characteristics of the business model generate some very useful pricing advantages that can help drive financial performance.

19-minute readContinue Reading
Tayfun Uslu

Tayfun Uslu

Tayfun is a management consultant and co-founder of a $500 million e-commerce company. He enjoys startup-oriented work across finance and strategy.

Genetic Algorithms: Search and Optimization by Natural Selection

Many problems have optimal algorithms developed for them, while many others require us to randomly guess until we get a good answer. Even an optimal solution becomes slow and complex at a certain scale, at which point we can turn to natural processes to see how they reach acceptable results.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Eugene Ossipov walks us through the basics of creating a Genetic Algorithm and gives us the knowledge to delve deeper into solving any problems using this approach.

9-minute readContinue Reading
Eugene Ossipov

Eugene Ossipov

Eugene (MCS) has spent over two decades as an architect and developer, including for the Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, and RBC.

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