Toptal Engineering Blog

A functional specification is a high-level design document created before implementation and serves as a true plan for the team. In this article, Toptal Freelance Ruby Developer Alec Ten Harmsel walks us through prototyping an algorithm and creating a functional specification with the help of AsciiDoc and R for a Ruby on Rails project.

What do you do when you come across a dataset that’s simply too big to allow fast queries? Google BigQuery could be part of the solution, though it’s no silver bullet. In this article, Toptal Java Developer Maksym Goroshkevych explains how BigQuery can drastically improve query performance, and when you should and should not use it.

The increasing accuracy of machine learning systems has resulted in a flood of applications using them. As machine learning models matured and improved, so did ways of attacking them. In this article, Toptal Python Developer Pau Labarta Bajo examines the world of adversarial machine learning, explains how ML models can be attacked, and what you can do to safeguard them against attack.

Building a mobile app isn't cheap—and the harsh reality is that most apps fail. Find out how to leverage fundamental analytics metrics to make sure your app actually turns a profit.

Flask is a great way to get up and running quickly with a Python applications, but what if you wanted to make something a bit more robust? In this article, Toptal Freelance Python Developer Ivan PoleschyuI shares some tips and useful recipes for building a complete production-ready Flask application.

There are a number of ways of implementing animated full-screen layouts with a large degree of human interaction, and many developers would resort to a JavaScript plugin to save time. In this article, Toptal JavaScript Developer Stefan Vitasovic demonstrates how you can do it using nothing but CSS and JavaScript, without including a bloated library or plugin in your project.

Types and testable code are two of the most effective ways of avoiding bugs. In this tutorial, discover TypeScript best practices while you create a Discord bot from scratch.

Swift is great, but what if your application relies on a library that’s written using C++? Luckily Objective-C++ is here to save the day. In this article, Toptal Freelance Swift Developer Josip Bernat integrates C++ code with Swift by using wrapper classes as a bridge and then creates an app that recognizes the Toptal logo using OpenCV.