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You Need a Hero: The Project Manager
For every tech project or business, there’s inevitably the “client” and the “programmer”. Sometimes they make it work between themselves, but often someone has to step in to establish the ground rules, keep everyone honest, and facilitate communication between all parties.
This someone, this hero, is the project manager.
In this entertaining article, Ethan James gives his insights as to why you, the developer, and you, the client, should invest in a project manager… or at least employ the techniques outlined.
Ethan James
Ethan is a passionate Javascript developer who writes clean, semantic HTML5 and CSS3 and is as responsive as the sites he builds.
Clean Code and the Art of Exception Handling
Exceptions are a fundamental element of modern programming—and nothing to fear. Implement these exception handling best practices to write clean code that is easier to maintain.
Ahmed AbdelHalim
Ahmed is a back-end (API) developer who loves building useful and fun tools. He also has experience as a web developer.
HSA For Developers: Heterogeneous Computing For The Masses
HSA is a set of standards and specifications designed to allow further integration of CPUs and GPUs on the same bus. This is not an entirely new concept, but HSA takes it to the next level. HSA would effectively take the developer out of the equation, at least when it comes to assigning different loads to different processing cores.
In this post, Toptal Technical Editor and resident chip geek Nermin Hajdarbegovic takes a closer look at HSA and the future of heterogeneous computing in general. Get ready for some good news, but don’t forget to brace for bad news first.
Nermin Hajdarbegovic
As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.
Getting Started with the Elixir Programming Language
Elixir, a dynamic, functional programming language, is designed for building scalable and maintainable applications with a simple, modern, and tidy syntax. Although it is easy to understand, Elixir’s approach to concurrency and its data type nuances require some getting used to.
In this article, Toptal engineer Kleber Virgilio Correia gives us a comprehensive guide to the various basic data types in that are available in Elixir.
Kleber Virgilio Correia
Kleber’s long professional experience has covered Unix, Agile, functional and OOP languages, REST APIs, distributed apps, and the cloud.
Handling Intensive Tasks with Laravel
When dealing with time consuming, resource intensive tasks, most PHP developers are tempted to choose the “quick hack route”. We’ve all used “ini_set(‘max_execution_time’, HUGE_INT);” before, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
In today’s tutorial, PHP developer Daniel Gheorghe demonstrates how an application’s user experience may be improved by separating long-running tasks from the main request flow using Laravel.
Daniel Gheorghe
Daniel is a Zend Certified PHP Engineer with 10+ years of experience as the lead PHP developer for multiple companies around the world.
Toptal's Quick and Practical CSS Cheat Sheet
As software engineers, we’re always searching for the best tools and guides that will help us to be more productive while spending less time searching and reading long technical specifications.
Today, Toptal is pleased to present an entirely new resource to the community as a free download: a CSS Cheat Sheet. Toptal’s CSS Cheat Sheet is a quick CSS reference guide, and includes CSS syntax, the most important selectors, properties, sizes, and units, and other useful CSS details, all in a short, easily understandable format.
Tomislav Bacinger
Tomislav (MSc) has spent more than 15 years in full-stack development and data analysis, but geospatial visualizations are his favorite.
Rethinking Authentication And Biometric Security, The Toptal Way
How does one secure a vast, distributed network of tech talent? There are three ways of doing this: the right way, the wrong way, and the Toptal way. Today, we will be discussing the latter, and unveiling our plans for a comprehensive overhaul of our onboarding and authentication procedures.
In this post, Toptal Technical Editor Nermin Hajdarbegovic will help you get acquainted with our brand new processes. Since all Toptalers will be required to use our new security platform, we encourage you to comment and contribute to our efforts.
Nermin Hajdarbegovic
As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.
Mastering 2D Cameras in Unity: A Tutorial for Game Developers
Camera systems are very important in conveying the right atmosphere in video games. When developing games, even 2D ones, advanced cameras should be your tool of choice.
In this article, Toptal engineer Mihai Cozma shows us how to build a modular camera system for 2D platform games using some simple components in Unity that can be easily extended to 2.5D or even 3D games.
Mihai Cozma
Mihai has 11+ years of professional experience with various technologies and tools. He is proficient at C/ C++, .NET, and Unity 3D.
The 9 Most Common Mistakes That Ionic Developers Make
Ionic is extremely popular at the moment, and it has revolutionized the hybrid application industry in a way that nobody could have imagined. However, over time, the best practices and tooling for Ionic have not progressed in the same way. As a result, the number of pitfalls that developers need to look out for when working with Ionic is still high.
In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Julien Renaux outlines the most common mistakes that Ionic developers should know.
Julien Renaux
Scrum Master Julien (MCS) is a front-end mobile dev who’s worked for startups and enterprises like eBay, and even the French space agency.
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