Technology

How source code becomes a running program is often opaque: “Just run the compiler” is all that developers normally need to know.

Writing an interpreter from scratch—including its lexer and parser—is an illuminating challenge.

Visual regression testing is not a new concept. Toptal engineers routinely use it, but with looming deadlines, they sometimes need to innovate and improvise.

This article demonstrates how Toptal QA specialists leveraged UI testing and Cypress to run visual regression tests without resorting to specialized tools.

Researchers snuck vulnerabilities past the peer-review process and into the open-source Linux kernel codebase. What does this mean for the ubiquitous Linux kernel, and open source in general?

Our Express.js REST API series ends with a bang! Learn how to add a Dockerized MongoDB instance, Mongoose, JWT authentication, user permissions, and automated testing with Mocha, Chai, and SuperTest.

While React is often lauded for making front-end development more efficient, this popular library can be problematic for search engines.

In this article, Toptal data visualization engineer Vineet Markan examines why React is challenging for SEO and outlines what software engineers can do to improve the search rankings of React websites.

Indexes and partitioning can help with SQL performance, but they’re not cure-alls. Through everyday examples of date range and LIKE queries, find out how to “think like an RDBMS” to make yours run faster.

NgRx is a popular Angular state management library, but to unlock its full potential developers may require a few new skills.

In this article, Toptal Full-stack Developer Luka Onikadze explains why he became an NgRx admirer after starting off as a skeptic.

Testing can be a daunting task even for experienced teams with an abundance of resources. How do Toptal developers write tests and what do they use?

In this article, Toptal React Developer Boris Yordanov introduces you to Picasso, a component library designed by our developers for in-house use.

When you hear the word “linter,” you probably think about particular widely used tools. But there’s a different kind of linters.

In this article, Toptal Back-end Architect Robert Pankowecki introduces you to linters implemented by Ruby libraries and details their capabilities.

The concise syntax of Scala usually helps developers avoid writing boilerplate. When repetitive code is required anyway, developers can use macros and quasiquotes to keep code clean and maintainable. Here’s how.

As microservices architecture continues to evolve, interservice communication has become a significant challenge to manage. Service meshes are becoming the standard solution, but how do popular and up-and-coming service meshes compare?

The Express.js REST API journey continues! Move from models to full DAOs and DTOs, validate requests with middleware, separate services from controllers, and prepare for a real database.

Harnessing the potential of machine learning for computer vision is not a new concept but recent advances and the availability of new tools and datasets have made it more accessible to developers.

In this article, Toptal Software Developer Teimur Gasanov demonstrates how you can create an app capable of identifying handwritten digits in under 30 minutes, including the API and UI.

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

WebAssembly gives near-native performance to web apps and allows languages other than JavaScript—plus their libraries—to be used on the web. This tutorial leverages Rust and the Web Audio API to make a basic guitar tuner app that runs at 60 FPS, even on mobile.

The Apple M1 processor represents a significant step forward for Apple, but what does it mean for developers, designers, and other professionals using Apple hardware?

In this article, Toptal Engineering Blog Editor Nermin Hajdarbegovic outlines what makes the M1 different and what professionals need to keep in mind should they choose to upgrade their hardware.