Toptal Blog

Writing an application is only part of the story. In order for it to be of value, it needs deploying somewhere it can scale; it has to run with high availability, have backups, and so on. Deployment and infrastructure management isn’t a simple process. And Terraform does nothing to hide the complexity. However, it does make your infrastructure declarative and reproducible, like your code.

In this article, Toptal Freelance DevOps Engineer Radosław Szalski teaches us what Terraform is, how its components work, and how to configure an entire AWS Cloud solution in minutes using its configuration language.

In part I of this two-part series, Toptal Management Consultant Carolyn Deng provided an overview of the world of AI aimed at investors, with a focus on understanding what factors make for a great AI company. In this follow-up post, she outlines five practical steps investors should follow when diligencing a potential AI investment.

Online communities shape the relationship between a company and its distributed workforce. They also foster connections between workers, enriching both their professional and personal lives. In this article, David Abramovich, the Online Community Leader at Toptal, shares fundamental steps to successfully cultivate this critical ingredient that increasingly impacts the future of work.

Node 8 has brought significant performance and feature upgrades. Should you use it on new projects? Is it worth upgrading existing codebases? In this article, Toptal Freelance JavaScript Developer Youssef Sherif gives a tour of Node 8’s biggest changes and what they mean for your project.

Nearly one in four users will abandon a mobile app after using it just once. Good onboarding makes a great first impression, gives users a guided introduction, and can significantly improve user retention.

Entity Framework is a great tool, but in some cases its performance is slow. One such case arises when complex queries use “Contains.”

Join Toptal .​NET Developer Anton Shkuratov in exploring how performance issues can be mitigated and finding the best approach to this type of complex queries.

Well-crafted words improve UX and provide people with decision-making clarity. We explore the true value of UX copy and provide sensible writing tips for greater user engagement.

Stock options are widely used in public and private markets, both as malleable trading tools and for employee compensation. Yet many do not understand the components behind how they are priced. This guide discusses what drives the behavior of call and put options and how they can be deployed within portfolio management.

The use of color in design can affect the emotions and moods of the people. Using colors wisely can improve UX and induce desired behaviors in significant ways.