Toptal Blog

Working as a remote software development freelancer has many benefits, but setting up an effective distributed working environment can be a real challenge. In this article, Toptal Engineer Ivan Voras describes how he leverages SSH and a number of related technologies, along with the Raspberry Pi and ownCloud, to be able to work effectively from anywhere.

One of the hardest things to do in software development is to determine how long and how much it will take to deliver a new software product. Should it be so hard? The answer is not straightforward.

WebRTC has opened doors to all kinds of new peer-to-peer web applications and games that can run in the browser without the need of additional plugins. However, being a relatively new technology, it still poses some unique challenges to developers. PeerJS aims to tackle some of those challenges by providing an elegant API and insulating developers from WebRTC’s implementation differences. In this article, Toptal engineer Mahmud Ridwan provides an introductory tutorial to building a simple, peer-to-peer web game using PeerJS.

Here’s the Vulkan API in a hundred words or less: It’s a low-overhead, close-to-metal API for 3D graphics and compute applications. Vulkan is basically a follow-on to OpenGL. It was originally referred to as the “next generation OpenGL initiative,” and it includes a few bits and pieces from AMD’s Mantle API. Vulkan is supposed to provide numerous advantages over other GPU APIs, enabling superior cross-platform support, better support for multithreaded processors, lower CPU load, and a pinch of OS agnosticism.

The Internet is mankind’s biggest repository of knowledge, information, useful (and useless: think of cat pics) digital content. Today, we will be taking a quick look at something useful and down to earth: free online programming books.

Between square inch smart wristwatches and mammoth smart TVs, a responsive website capable of adapting to a wide array of screen sizes and device capabilities is something no one complains about. However, many websites are still plagued by desktop-first design paradigms, or mobile-first paradigms with absolutely no focus on performance. These traditional approaches to responsive web design have various shortcomings. Fortunately, some simple ideas can help solve these problems.

Cars with next-generation connected infotainment systems will create new opportunities on several fronts. In case you already have an infotainment system with a neat touchscreen and GPS in your car, please accept my condolences; it’s about to become as obsolete as a Nokia 3310 compared to an iPhone.

The newest version of the Java platform, Java 8, was released more than a year ago. Many companies and developers are still starting new applications with old versions of Java. There are very few good reasons to do this, because Java 8 has brought some important improvements to the language. I’ll show you a handful of the most useful and interesting ones.

Bitcoin created a lot of buzz on the Internet. It was ridiculed, it was attacked, and eventually it was accepted and became a part of our lives. However, Bitcoin is not alone. At this moment, there are over 700 AltCoin implementations, which use similar principles of CryptoCurrency.