Toptal Engineering Blog

Complex, tightly-coupled, and fragile interdependent code. We’ve all written it. The kind of code where fixing one bug creates seven more. Have you ever wondered how to create independent modular code?

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Konrad Gadzinowski walks us through the different types of architectural paradigms you can adhere to and how to write modular and decoupled code where changes to one module have minimal impact on the overall application.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Developer Adam Wasserman explains what software entropy is, what causes it and how it manifests itself, and what can be done to prevent it or mitigate its effects.

Validating user inputs is an essential part of any robust web application. Angular 4 makes it especially easy for both template-driven and reactive forms.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Angular Developer Igor Geshoski walks us through the different approaches in Angular 4 form validation and shows how even complex form validation can be done easily.

Is there really an ultimate best JavaScript front-end framework? Maybe there isn’t, but there is a way to choose the best framework for your web project.

In this article, Toptal Freelance JavaScript Developer Giorgi Bakradze takes a look at four of the most popular frameworks from five important perspectives that make it easy to determine which one is the best fit for your project’s needs.

Serverless computing is an architecture style in which the code is executed in a cloud platform where we don’t need to worry about the hardware and software setup, security, performance, and CPU idle time costs. It’s an advancement of cloud computing that goes beyond infrastructure that abstracts the software environment as well. It means no configuration is required to run the code.

This article will help you identify and address various communication issues that can plague off-site professionals. Whether you’re a full-stack developer, a UI designer, or a content creator, these easy to memorize tips will help you hone your communication skills.

The Aho-Corasick algorithm can be used to efficiently search for multiple patterns in a large blob of text, making it a really useful algorithm in data science and many other areas.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Roman Vashchegin shows how the Aho-Corasick algorithm uses a trie data structure to efficiently match a dictionary of words against any text.

The goal of this article is to introduce you to the underlying principles of accessibility and help you flawlessly implement web accessibility guidelines and standards on your next project. Even minor improvements can help your content rank better, reach more people, and improve the overall user experience.

The Hungarian graph algorithm solves the linear assignment problem in polynomial time. By modeling resources (e.g., contractors and available contracts) as a graph, the Hungarian algorithm can be used to efficiently determine an optimum way of allocating resources.

This article will give you an introduction to the principles behind public-key cryptosystems and introduce you to the Santana Rocha-Villas Boas (SRVB) cryptosystem, developed by the author of the article and prof. Daniel Santana Rocha. The algorithm authors are making a campaign that includes a financial reward to anyone who manages to crack the code.

Spring Boot gives very useful error messages to engineers building REST APIs. Yet, those same messages are noisy and useless for the API consumer, not to mention they reveal implementation details. Luckily, there are simple ways of handling this.

In this article, I will try to give you a good understanding of which scenarios could be covered by Celery. Not only will you see interesting examples, but will also learn how to apply Celery with real world tasks such as background mailing, report generation, logging and error reporting. I will share my own way of testing tasks beyond emulation and explain a few tricks that go beyond the official documentation and took me hours of research to discover myself.

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern is great for the longevity and maintainability of an iOS application’s codebase… but you may find yourself adding similar functions to multiple models as your app grows. In cases such as networking, moving common logic out of your model classes and into singleton helper classes can be a better approach. In this article, I’ll teach you how to set up a centralized singleton networking object that, decoupled from micro-level MVC components, can be reused throughout your application.

With augmented reality on the rise, more and more libraries and tools are developed to tap into that market. Apple recently released ARKit, which shows great promise through power and simplicity of use.

The advantages of SVG on the web go beyond producing resolution-independent graphics. With a little CSS and JavaScript, you can apply cool animations and effects to your front-end without requiring the user to install bulky plugins.

Sharing related information among isolated systems has become increasingly important. There are many methods to choose from to perform that task for SQL Server, but it’s important to know which is better for each use case.

WordPress is a very popular way to get a site up and running quickly. However, in their haste, plenty of developers end up making horrible decisions. Some mistakes, like leaving WP_DEBUG set to “true,” may be easy to make. Others, like lumping all your JavaScript into a single file, are as common as lazy engineers. Whichever mistake you manage to make, read on to find out the 12 most common WordPress mistakes that new and seasoned developers make.

Write better Ruby code by leveraging its metaprogramming features. In this article, you will learn how to create your own Ruby domain specific language (DSL).

Process-oriented programming is a paradigm in which the process structure and communication between processes of a system are the primary concerns. That’s the paradigm, but how does it work in real life?

Premature optimization hurts experts and novices alike. How can you know when and how to optimize without shooting your project in the foot?

This week, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Kevin Bloch walks project managers through some time-tested optimization strategies and when to use them.

Optimization sounds ideal. Ironically, the very aspect of our code we are trying to optimize can be sabotaged by this process, taking out innocent bystanders along the way. Is it a perfectionists’ goldmine…or minefield? In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Kevin Bloch offers a more balanced approach to the art and science of optimization.