Toptal Blog

Java has been a dominant programming language for ages, but modern times call for modern languages. Meet Kotlin, a modern, clear, and expressive programming language powered by the same virtual machine technology that powers Java.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Tomasz Czura takes us for a spin through the world of Kotlin and shows us how it can be used to make an Android application with an elegant architecture without compromising the very qualities of the code that Kotlin aims to provide.

The plethora of tutorials on building Android apps may have you thinking that making a mobile app is simple. In reality, however, performance issues can be very complicated, and because performance plays a key role in making sure that your app stays on your users’ list of favorite apps for a long time, every little detail must be given full attention.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Tibor Kaputa shares some tips on how you can optimize some common performance issues and identify some of the bottlenecks in your Android app.

Testing frameworks such as Testify, Ginkgo, and Gomega can streamline testing for Golang applications, however, some of the most efficient and effective tools for testing can be found in Go’s standard libraries. In this article, Toptal developer Gabriel Aszalos covers the basics of testing in Go, from table testing to JSON response assertion.

Are you a Scala developer hoping to scale your application in the cloud? If so, meet Kubernetes, a cluster manager for Docker applications. Developed by Google, it’s the latest in new open source tools making major waves.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Michele Sciabarra guides us through a step-by-step tutorial on how to take a generic Scala application and implement Kubernetes and Docker to launch multiple instances of the application.

When dealing with web-based projects that run in the production environment, being able to build and deploy changes quickly is a top priority. However, repetitive processes such as building front-end assets, when not automated, can be prone to critical errors.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Anton Kanevsky shows us how Gulp can solve various challenges of build automation through simple JavaScript routines.

Many product owners don’t have a technical background and thus often find themselves unprepared and scrambling when it comes to bringing on a new development team. This often results in hindered progress, wasted time, and frustration for everyone involved. If this sounds like it could be you, either now or in the future, then you should be somewhat concerned.

In this blog post, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Carlos Ramirez III will walk you through the various steps of a typical transition process in project management so you can prepare for this eventuality and make the transition as smooth as possible.

As a language, R is strongly tied to data and is thus used mostly by statisticians and data scientists. Many who already use R for machine learning, though, are not aware that data munging can be done faster in R, meaning another tool is not required for that task.

In this article, Freelance Software Engineer Jan Gorecki explores tabular data transformations and introduces us to one of the fastest open-source data wrangling tools available.

“So much of what’s new and exciting about Angular 2 is its new way of thinking rather than its new architecture,” says Toptal Freelance Developer Ethan James.

In this article, Ethan walks through the inner workings of a simple Angular 1.5 app and then shows us how to upgrade it to Angular 2 while giving us the necessary understanding to truly appreciate it.

Meet Web Audio API, a powerful programming interface for controlling audio on the web. Gone are the days when the web browser could rarely play a sound file correctly. With this API, you can now load sound from different sources, apply effects, create visualizations, and do much more.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Joaquín Aldunate shows us how to unleash our inner musician using Web Audio API with the Tone.js framework by giving us a brief overview of what this API has to offer and how it can be used to manipulate audio on the web.