Back-end

Properly used, an SQL database index can be so effective that it might seem like magic. But the following series of exercises will show that underneath, the logic of most SQL indexes—and wielding them correctly—is quite straightforward.

Customer Relationship Management systems provide businesses with more clarity and information about customer behavior, helping boost sales, retain existing customers, and attract new ones.

In this article, Toptal Software Developer Leif Gensert outlines the basic challenges of CRM integration and explains what you can do to make the process as efficient and frictionless as possible.

Feedback on an enterprise web app prompted an experiment. Could a WhatsApp chatbot replace it? Would people like it better? Would it be more useful?

Missing the luxury of a good, old-fashioned remote control when the laptop is beyond easy reach? Transform your old smartphone into a remote and learn some basic Node.js/Express/Pug along the way.

Pre-trained models are making waves in the deep learning world. Using massive pre-training datasets, these NLP models bring previously unheard-of feats of AI within the reach of app developers.

For those working with AI, the future is certainly exciting. At the same time, there is a general sense that AI suffers from one pesky flaw: AI in its current state can be unpredictably unreliable.

Can Golang be object-oriented? Go is a post-OOP programming language, however, it can still leverage OOP patterns to structure the code in a clear and understandable way. This tutorial demonstrates how to use Go with OOP concepts, including constructors, subtyping, polymorphism, dependency injection, and testing with mocks.

One of the new possibilities offered by Lambda@Edge is the ability to implement server-side A/B testing using Lambdas on CloudFront’s edge servers.

In this article, Toptal Full-stack Developer Georgios Boutsioukis guides you through the process and outlines the pros and cons of A/B testing with Lambda@Edge.

Toptal’s JavaScript Speed Coding Challenge invited creative solutions from the beginning. As the week played out, competitors got closer and closer to the maximum theoretical score. Then something unexpected happened…

Cloud architects with the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate qualification are in high demand, with good reason—the AWS exam sets the bar high. What’s the best way to prepare for it?

Tests should keep apps from being flaky. But tests themselves can become flaky—even the most straightforward ones. Here’s how we dove into a problematic test on a PostgreSQL-backed Rails app, and what we uncovered.

The main artifact of all your work is most likely plain text files. So why don’t you use Notepad to create them? Find out how the Language Server Protocol can transform text editors into code editors, without coupling.

Shopping online is more convenient than ever, so how do you create an online marketplace tailored to cater to your specific needs?

In this article, Toptal JavaScript Developer Konrad Gadzinowski explores marketplace business models and payment methods for both regional and global services.

Internet privacy’s cutting-edge technology includes encrypted server name indication (ESNI) and encrypted DNS in the form of DNS over HTTPS (DoH). Find out what they are, why they exist, and how they work.

The quietly growing number of serious Haxe projects have something new to contend with: the first major compiler release in over three years. What does Haxe 4 bring to the table?

If a web application is big and old enough, there may come a time when you need to break it down into smaller, isolated parts and extract services from it. Some of these will be more independent than others.

In this post, Toptal Full-stack Developer Viktar Basharymau explains how his team extracted an app from the monolithic Rails application that powers Toptal, and how the new service’s technical stack was selected.