Toptal Blog

Using modern DevOps Tools like Chef, Docker, Ansible, Packer, Troposphere, Consul, Jenkins, SonarQube, AWS, etc., does not mean that you are applying DevOps principles. DevOps is a way of thinking.

Rapid prototyping and the ability to produce quick visual results are features of many programming languages and frameworks. However, some take it even further by making these their primary goals. Processing, a programming language based on Java, allows its users to code within the context of visual arts and has been designed from the ground up to provide instant visual feedback. In this article, Toptal engineer Oguz Gelal provides a gentle introduction to Processing and some insights into its inner mechanics.

Apple’s iOS 9 and WatchOS 2 updates brings a number of novel features, including improved multitasking for iPads and a host of aesthetic tweaks. However, while iOS 9 is just an incremental update with a focus on the new iPad Pro, WatchOS 2 is not a skin-deep update. Apple has changed the WatchOS architecture and opened up a range of new possibilities for developers.

Performance and data interoperability are critical to the success of any web application. For web apps that need to support video processing – which is inherently compute- and I/O-intensive – these challenges are particularly acute. In this post, I describe some of my experience successfully incorporating video capabilities into a PHP-based web app, leveraging open source technologies and cloud-based services to the greatest extent possible.

Several factors conspired to stifle Android Wear growth, ranging from lack of Google development, to inadequate hardware. Some of these problems have been addressed, some are being addressed, while others cannot be addressed with currently available technology.

Ruby metaprogramming, one of the most interesting aspects of Ruby, enables the programming language to achieve an extreme level of expressiveness. It is because of this very feature that many gems, such as RSpec and ActiveRecord, can work the way they do. In this article, Toptal engineer Nikola Todorovic demystifies Ruby metaprogramming using some examples that are relevant to everyday programming and aims to bring it closer to average Ruby developers.

The Toptal Global Mentors program is designed to help novice developers around the world improve their skills and create new career opportunities. In our diverse, yet interconnected global industry, cutting-edge skills are always in short supply. The program aims to bridge the gap between skilled software engineers in developed countries and students from across the globe, who aspire to join the industry.

NGINX, a sophisticated web server, offers high performance load balancing features, among many other capabilities. Like most other web server software for Unix-based systems, NGINX can be configured easily by writing simple text files. However, there is something interesting about tools that configure other tools, and it may be even easier to configure an NGINX load balancer if there was a tool for it.

In this article, Toptal engineer Mahmud Ridwan demonstrates how easy it is to build a simple tool with a web-based GUI capable of configuring NGINX as a load balancer.

Building cross-platform desktop applications has been something of a nightmare for a very long time, as extreme differences between popular desktop operating systems makes it a challenging feat. However, in light of newer tools and frameworks like Electron, building a cross-platform desktop application has never been easier. In this article, Toptal engineer Stéphane P. Péricat walks us through a step-by-step tutorial to building a cross-platform password key-ring desktop application using technologies that most of us are already familiar with.