Back-end

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 Backend Engineer Maciek Rzasa recounts how his team extracted billing functionality from the Toptal platform and how they overcame a series of performance issues.

Time and date manipulation is notoriously difficult. Developers encountering time zone rules, leap seconds, differences in locale-specific formatting are wise to resort to popular time and date manipulation libraries. But without thinking about how exactly they work, it's still easy to create all sorts of obscure bugs.

Git provides basic branching operations, but advanced patterns are left up to the user. The popular "Git flow" branching model helps, but can also complicate some common procedures. Thankfully, a new variation retains the benefits, while streamlining everyday work.

Learn practical TypeScript patterns with interfaces and extended classes. Avoid messy console.log() statements with Winston and the Node.js debug module. Create an Express.js-powered REST API back end from scratch!

The Spring Security framework is the de facto industry standard when it comes to securing Spring-based apps, but it can be tricky to configure. In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Ioram Gordadze demonstrates how you can implement it without wasting too much time.

Good programming language frameworks make it easy to produce quality products faster. Great frameworks even make the whole development experience enjoyable. FastAPI is a new Python web framework that’s powerful and enjoyable to use.

JavaScript frameworks based on React can help you build a fast, reliable mobile app, but it’s not always easy to determine which framework is best for your project. Choosing the wrong framework can result in an app with slow and redundant code. JavaScript expert Sean Wang builds the same natural language processing mobile application using Cordova, Ionic, and React Native, then discusses the advantages and limitations of each.

Sorting a table can make some queries faster—but the maintenance cost is untenable. Enter real database indexes and their most common implementation structure: the B-tree.