Toptal Blog

The Toptal Blog is the top hub for developers, designers, management consultants, executives, and entrepreneurs, featuring key technology updates, tutorials, freelancer resources, and management insights.

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Toptal core team members share their experience, expertise, and perspectives on the Toptal Edge Blog

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Building a Node.js/TypeScript REST API, Part 2: Models, Middleware, and Services

The Express.js REST API journey continues! Move from models to full DAOs and DTOs, validate requests with middleware, separate services from controllers, and prepare for a real database.

17-minute readContinue Reading
Marcos Henrique da Silva

Marcos Henrique da Silva

Marcos has 17+ years in IT and development. His passions include REST architecture, Agile development methodology, and JS.

The Ultimate Experience: A Guide to the Principles of Sensory Design

Digital design routinely ignores neurological factors beyond sight. Sensory design principles emphasize the interconnection of human perception and prompt designers to explore non-visual solutions.

5-minute readContinue Reading
Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful connections through branding, illustration, and design.

Machine Learning Number Recognition: From Zero to Application

Harnessing the potential of machine learning for computer vision is not a new concept but recent advances and the availability of new tools and datasets have made it more accessible to developers.

In this article, Toptal Software Developer Teimur Gasanov demonstrates how you can create an app capable of identifying handwritten digits in under 30 minutes, including the API and UI.

10-minute readContinue Reading
Teimur Gasanov

Teimur Gasanov

Teimur is passionate about writing composite interfaces using React and building extensible APIs with Go. He excels at finding solutions for atypical problems.

Billing Extraction: A Tale of GraphQL Internal API Optimization

Extracting functional components from a monolithic app into a service can be a daunting task but choosing the right tools and techniques for the job can expedite the process.

In this article, Toptal Back-end Engineer Maciek Rzasa recounts how his team extracted billing functionality from the Toptal platform and how they overcame a series of performance issues.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Maciek Rząsa

Maciek Rząsa

An engineer, Scrum Master, and knowledge-sharing advocate, Maciek is interested in distributed systems, text processing, and writing software that matters.

Software Engineer Performance Reviews Explained

Software development is a complex process, and evaluating the performance of software engineers can be too. Finding the right balance between complexity and practicality in software engineer performance reviews is vital.

In this article, Toptal Engineering Blog Editor Nermin Hajdarbegovic outlines the difference between commonly used performance review models and discusses how they should be employed.

11-minute readContinue Reading
Nermin Hajdarbegović

Nermin Hajdarbegović

A veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrencies.

Think Business: How to Increase Your Designer Value

The principles that govern design are foreign to many business leaders but it takes more than shiny deliverables to span the knowledge gap. Designers must translate design value into business value.

< 5-minute readContinue Reading
Damola Taiwo

Damola Taiwo

Damola is an expert UX/UI designer with a passion for problem-solving and experience in finance, government, tech, and entertainment.

A Month in the Life: Interim CFO Roles and Best Practices

An interim CFO has, on average, six to eight months to complete the job set forth by the company, meaning the first 30 days will be critical to accomplishing the goals for the position and setting a good long-term strategy for the company.

8-minute readContinue Reading
Jen Banzaca

Jen Banzaca

Jen Banzaca has been a financial journalist for 16 years, covering topics from financial services trends, investing, hedge funds, regulatory issues and compliance best practices.

WebAssembly/Rust Tutorial: Pitch-perfect Audio Processing

WebAssembly gives near-native performance to web apps and allows languages other than JavaScript—plus their libraries—to be used on the web. This tutorial leverages Rust and the Web Audio API to make a basic guitar tuner app that runs at 60 FPS, even on mobile.

24-minute readContinue Reading
Peter Suggate

Peter Suggate

Peter is a full-stack developer with 15 years of experience building apps for the web and desktop.

Paving the Path to Purchase: E-commerce UX Best Practices

Mobile e-commerce may be the future, but desktop sites are digital gold mines. To engage shoppers, boost product value, and unlock more revenue, designers must master these e-commerce UX best practices.

8-minute readContinue Reading
Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful connections through branding, illustration, and design.

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