Back-end

When dealing with time consuming, resource intensive tasks, most PHP developers are tempted to choose the “quick hack route”. We’ve all used “ini_set(‘max_execution_time’, HUGE_INT);” before, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

In today’s tutorial, PHP developer Daniel Gheorghe demonstrates how an application’s user experience may be improved by separating long-running tasks from the main request flow using Laravel.

Camera systems are very important in conveying the right atmosphere in video games. When developing games, even 2D ones, advanced cameras should be your tool of choice.

In this article, Toptal engineer Mihai Cozma shows us how to build a modular camera system for 2D platform games using some simple components in Unity that can be easily extended to 2.5D or even 3D games.

The threaded model and global interpreter lock has always been in the way of Python handling thousands of concurrent long-lived connections. Modern web frameworks, such as Tornado, use non-blocking network I/O to make Python feasible for implementing WebSocket servers.

In this article, Toptal engineer Jongwook Kim walks us through the process of implementing a simple WebSocket-based web application in Python using the Tornado web framework.

In the rapidly evolving Internet world, getting things done fast is always critical. Still, developers today waste hundreds of hours on tasks not related to programming: setting up databases or caches, deploying projects, monitoring online statistics, and so on.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Minhao Zhang guides us in a step-by-step tutorial on how to reduce waste by setting up your first virtual machine using Amazon Web Services, and introduces the most widely used AWS services that can boost your productivity in minutes.

Writing code that is easily testable takes some effort and planning. However, some patterns exist that can be used to write simple and functional code, making it easier to test them when the time comes.

In this article, Toptal engineer Joshua Mock shares some useful tips and patterns for writing testable code in JavaScript that are both simple to understand and simple to implement.

To create a .NET project from scratch, simply using Visual Studio Wizard is good enough most of the time. However, the default project settings produced by wizards are hardly acceptable for professional teams, as they set too low of a bar on quality.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Andrei Smirnov guides us through several standard practices, configuration files, and project settings every developer should apply when starting a new .NET project. Doing this in the very beginning of a project decreases future technical debt and makes product source code readable and professional-looking.

If you haven’t been working with PHP lately, you might wonder what happened to PHP 6. Why the skip from PHP 5 to PHP 7? Well, long story short, PHP 6 was a failure. To avoid confusion, the new version was renamed PHP 7.

PHP 7 introduces a number of new features, while at the same time dropping depreciated SAPIs and extensions. As a result, it tends to outperform PHP 5.x by a wide margin. Some compatibility issues could pose a problem, but most developers have nothing to worry about.

In this post, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Vilson Duka explains what makes PHP 7 different, and why it’s time to make the switch.

Since its debut in 2008, Python 3 has come a long way. Gone are the days when it lacked support for almost all useful libraries and tools. Python 3 offers many improvements and amazing new features that make writing robust code in Python easier than ever.

In this article, Toptal engineer Dario Bertini discusses some of the improvements and features that Python 3 has to offer and explains whether switching to Python 3 is a smart choice right now.

Meteor is a framework for rapidly building real-time JavaScript web applications. It can be used to build complex applications with amazing ease. However, that can often result in adoption of bad development practices and poorly structured code.

In this article, Toptal engineer Darion Cassel shares some simple ways to improve the structure of your next Meteor-based web application without resorting to complicated boilerplates and scaffolding tools.

Robot Operating System, a framework for building robot applications, allows developers to assemble a complex system by connecting existing solutions for small problems.

In this article, Toptal engineer Adnan Ademovic gives us a step-by-step tutorial to building software for an onboard computer that allows us to remotely control and monitor a robot and running it in a simulated world using Robot OS.

Small teams frequently have to compete with bigger, more structured organizations who are capable of allocating more resources to project management, and software release management in particular. This means that small teams, or even individual developers, need to properly organize and execute their release process in order to keep up.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Lucas Mancini focuses specifically on small startups, teams that don’t have, or can’t afford, DevOps support, or teams that don’t have a formal process defined for releasing new versions of their product. The author provides a suggested checklist method to manage releases, tailored to match his past experience working on different projects, together with some recommended best practices and guidelines.

The current trend in graphic design is to use a lot of rounded corners in all sorts of shapes. We can observe this on many web pages, mobile devices, and desktop applications, as rounded corners make the user interface feel smoother and nicer. However, what if we have to generate rounded corners on the fly, and we cannot preload it from an image?

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Bojan Kverh guides us in a step-by-step tutorial on how to develop a simple class in C++ that can turn a complex polygon into a shape with rounded corners using Bezier curves and QPainter.

AWS Lambda offers a relatively thin service with a rich set of ancillary configuration options, making it possible to implement easily scalable and maintainable applications leveraging these services.

In this article, a Toptal engineer gives us a step-by-step tutorial for building an image uploading and resizing service and demonstrates how AWS Lambda can be used as a platform to easily build service-oriented architecture applications.

The Art of War is an ancient military treatise, but despite its age, the text is still included in the syllabus at many military schools. Sun Tzu’s principles and teachings also have practical applications in politics, business, sports, and, believe it or not, software development. In fact, you might just be applying some of these principles in your daily routine, without even knowing.

In this post, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Jose F. Maldonado explains why many of these ancient teachings still matter, and what you can do to make them work for you and your team.

Python is a powerful, object-based, high-level programming language with dynamic typing and binding. Due to its flexibility and power, developers often employ certain rules, or Python design patterns. What makes them so important and what do does this mean for the average Python developer?

In this post, Toptal Senior Software Engineer Andrei Boyanov explains why Python is great for design patterns, and how they can be used to unlock even more potential, or to streamline development and make code more maintainable.

Microservices are one of the latest trends in software design. In a microservices architecture, the classic monolithic back-end is substituted by a suite of distributed services. This design allows better separation of responsibilities, easier maintenance, greater flexibility in the choice of technologies for each service, and easier scalability and fault tolerance.

In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Francisco Temudo guides us in a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a microservices suite using Ruby.