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.

Unity AI Development: An xNode-based Graphical FSM Tutorial

Take your Unity AI game to the next level with xNode. In this tutorial, we boost our FSM-based AI with a graphical user interface, delivering an enhanced development environment.

13 minute readContinue Reading

Garegin Tadevosyan

Garegin is an accomplished Unity and C# game developer. He created a networking protocol for gamified playground equipment, served as the CTO of an educational gaming startup, and was a game developer on a multinational social-casino team.

Python vs. R: Syntactic Sugar Magic

Python and R empower data scientists to solve problems using elegant syntactic sugar, simplifying coding and solution exploration. Each language brings its unique capabilities and approach to bear.

7 minute readContinue Reading

Leandro Roser

Leandro is a data scientist and machine learning developer who creates solutions for companies, including Profasee and Boston Consulting Group. He has expertise with TensorFlow, Spark, Python, and R.

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Microsoft’s Power BI is one of the most popular software solutions used to perform social network analysis. Here’s how to create custom Power BI visuals in R for compelling and flexible results.

14 minute readContinue Reading

Bharat Garg

Bharat is a data scientist and developer who specializes in designing and developing interactive reports and tools to facilitate decision-making. He has worked with small startups and large corporations, such as Comcast, MetLife, UnitedHealth Group/Optum, and Jefferson Health. One of Bharat’s projects delivered $6 million in revenue, and another delivered $10 million in savings.

Harness the Power of WordPress Hooks: Actions and Filters Explained

WordPress developers might be tempted to customize this popular website builder directly, but that approach creates ongoing maintenance headaches. Fortunately, there’s a clean way to extend functionality: via WordPress hooks, actions, and filters.

11 minute readContinue Reading

Tahir Shahzad

Tahir is a full-stack web developer specializing in WordPress and AI. He has been featured as a speaker at several WordPress Meetups and WordCamps.

Code Writing Code: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Modern Metaprogramming

With a tour that includes Julia, Rust, and more, dive into the fascinating world of metaprogramming and get a taste for its history, common forms (such as macros), importance, and potential future.

16 minute readContinue Reading

Will Beddow

Will is a full-stack developer specializing in the design of complex performant systems. His recent work includes fintech systems design, cloud orchestration programs, and large corporate software systems.

gRPC vs. REST: Getting Started With the Best API Protocol

gRPC, REST’s up-and-coming competitor, approaches synchronous communication from another angle, offering protocol buffers and typed contracts. What does that mean for your project?

9 minute readContinue Reading

Laszlo Gyori

Laszlo is a solution architect, software developer, and expert on microservices architecture, gRPC, and REST. He has a master’s degree in IT from Budapest Institute of Technology.

Efficiency at Scale: A Tale of AWS Cost Optimization

Understanding total spend is a common challenge for cloud users, especially on projects with complex pricing models. This article explores the top AWS cost optimizations that will help you scale your platform effectively.

11 minute readContinue Reading

Rudolf Eremyan

Rudolf is a data scientist who has architected big data processing infrastructures on AWS and implemented data engineering solutions for Fortune 500 companies, including Disneyland Hong Kong and Philip Morris. He was invited to participate in NASA’s 2021 International Space Apps Challenge as a speaker and judge.

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.