Toptal Blog

Your software isn’t fully tested until you write integration tests for it. While unit tests help ensure that functions are properly written, integration tests help ensure that the system is working properly as a whole.

In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Luka Blažecki uses Node.js to explain why integration testing is important for every development platform and how to write clean, composable integration tests.

In the past few years, Microsoft has pulled a few aces from up its sleeve. Yes, they messed up Skype, failed with smartphones, and almost succeeded with tablets. But they did some really amazing things as well.

Relinquishing their closed empire approach, they open-sourced .NET, joined the Linux Foundation, released SQL Server for Linux, and created this great new tool called Visual Studio for Mac.

In this post, Head of Open Source Demir Selmanovic details how to make an Android and iOS app in C# on your Mac.

Digital icons replace descriptive words and sentences and optimize visual space, usability, and aesthetic. Learn to create 10 custom icons in less than 10 seconds each (we promise).

Limited SQL scalability has prompted industry leaders like Google and Amazon to develop NoSQL database management systems that optimize for performance, reliability, and consistency. In this article, Senior Software Engineer Mohammad Altarade explores some of the most popular NoSQL database options on the market and explains why this paradigm for storing and retrieving data will be with us for years to come.

WordPress, one of the most popular publishing platforms, has stood the test of time and now powers a significant portion of the web. Sadly, its reputation is plagued by claims of poor performance and complexity with scaling. However, the root causes of such performance issues are often bad code and poorly implemented plugins and themes.

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Martín Di Felice shares tips and tricks for WordPress developers who want to build better plugins and themes and destroy the notion that WordPress is a slow platform.

Dashboard analytics are used by engineers, product teams, and executives because they offer valuable insights into the success of digital products. We’ve collected the web’s most impressive examples.

Your website is gaining traction, and you are growing rapidly. Ruby/Rails is your programming language of choice. Your team is bigger and you’ve given up on “fat models, skinny controllers” as a design style for your Rails apps. However, you still don’t want to abandon using Rails? No problem.

In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Eqbal Quran explains how you can decouple and isolate your Rails components using nothing Plain Old Ruby Objects. Ruby objects and abstractions can decouple concerns, simplify testing, and help you produce clean, maintainable code.

You’ve heard that Magento is the eCommerce platform to use if you’re serious about your business – and you’re serious about your business – so you’ve decided on Magento. But do you know what you’re getting into?

In this post, Toptal Software Engineer Andrew Hughes walks us through the difference between WordPress WooCommerce and Magento. While Magento is the expert’s eCommerce platform of choice, it’s not always the right solution, depending on your client.

With the rise of big data and data science, storage and retrieval have become a critical pipeline component for data use and analysis. Recently, new data storage technologies have emerged. But the question is: Which one should you choose? Which one is best suited for data engineering?

In this article, Toptal Data Scientist Ken Hu compares three prominent storage technologies within the context of data engineering.