Toptal Engineering Blog

The Toptal Engineering Blog is a hub for in-depth development tutorials and new technology announcements created by professional software engineers in the Toptal network.

authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

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authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

WebVR Part 5: Design and Implementation

With all building blocks in place, it is time to wrap up our WebVR journey and demonstrate how everything is implemented.

In the last part of our WebVR series, Toptal Full-stack Developer Michael Cole goes over design and implementation in detail, explaining how the experience comes together.

15 minute readContinue Reading

Michael Cole

Michael is an expert full-stack web engineer, speaker, and consultant with over two decades of experience and a degree in computer science.

Oracle to SQL Server and SQL Server to Oracle Migration Guide - Pt. 3

Migrating in either direction between Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database? Code migration tools, public synonyms, and change management are important to keep in mind.

14 minute readContinue Reading

Leonid Draginsky

Leonid has 20+ years as a multi-platform developer and DBA, with special expertise in Oracle and SQL Server cross-platform migrations.

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Maintain Control: A Guide to Webpack and React, Pt. 2

In a React/Webpack development scenario, there are myriad options to choose from. It’s worth exploring some advanced techniques when it comes to TypeScript, CSS, web workers, and service workers.

8 minute readContinue Reading

Michael Pontus

Michael is a senior full-stack developer specializing in front-end development with React and TypeScript.

WebVR Part 4: Canvas Data Visualizations

Unlock the mysteries of the canvas component for your own visualizations. We have completed the simulation math, and now it’s time for some creative play.

In Part 4 of our WebVR series, we use the canvas element to make three rapid iterations to visualize the gravitational orbits of the planets in our simulation.

9 minute readContinue Reading

Michael Cole

Michael is an expert full-stack web engineer, speaker, and consultant with over two decades of experience and a degree in computer science.

How to Approach Wrappers for Swift Properties

A property wrapper is a generic structure that encapsulates read and write access to the property and adds additional behavior to it. We use it if we need to constrain the available property values, add extra logic to the read/write access (like using databases or user defaults), or add some additional methods.

In this article, Toptal Freelance iOS Developer Alexander Gaidukov demonstrates Swift 5.1’s new @propertyWrapper annotation—a more elegant solution.

7 minute readContinue Reading

Aleksandr Gaidukov

Alexander has more than nine years of experience developing applications and over five years with the iOS platform—both iPhone and iPad.

WebVR Part 3: Unlocking the Potential of WebAssembly and AssemblyScript

What if you could incorporate clever features from other programming languages for your JavaScript project, without too much hassle? That is the general idea behind WebAssembly.

In Part 3 of our WebVR series, Toptal Full-stack Developer Michael Cole introduces you to WebAssembly and AssemblyScript, outlining how they can be harnessed to create a browser-backend for web apps.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Michael Cole

Michael is an expert full-stack web engineer, speaker, and consultant with over two decades of experience and a degree in computer science.

WebVR Part 2: Web Workers and Browser Edge Computing

WebVR is bringing virtual reality to our browsers, but how do we make sure we have enough computing power to deliver a good experience? How do we make the most of multi-core, hyperthreaded processors?

In part two of our series, Toptal Full-stack Developer Michael Cole explains the basics of browser edge computing and the role of web workers.

8 minute readContinue Reading

Michael Cole

Michael is an expert full-stack web engineer, speaker, and consultant with over two decades of experience and a degree in computer science.

Toptal Engineering Expert

Gabriel Courtemanche

Gabriel is a highly efficient and reliable professional who possesses a broad skill set for web application development. He's been working on a range of products and clients—from working on scalability problems in production engineering teams at Shopify and Autodesk to launching new applications for startups. Most of his work consists of leading technical teams, by creating an easy development environment, fixing technical debts, providing best practices code examples, and mentoring devs.