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.

Toptalauthors 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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Toptalauthors 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.

After All These Years, the World Is Still Powered by C Programming

Despite the prevalence of higher-level languages, the C programming language continues to empower the world. There are plenty of reasons to believe that C programming will remain active for a long time. Here are some reasons that C is unbeatable, and almost mandatory, for certain applications.

12 minute readContinue Reading
Daniel Munoz

Daniel Munoz

Daniel has created high-performance applications in C++ for large companies such as Dreamworks. He also excels with C and ASM (x86).

Google Cloud Source Repositories vs. Bitbucket vs. GitHub: A Worthy Alternative?

Google’s new cloud code platform does not appear to be taking on GitHub head on. Instead, Cloud Source Repositories (CSR) will allow users to connect to repositories hosted on GitHub or Bitbucket. However, everything is automatically synced to the Google Cloud Source Repository.

The good news is that a Google CSR can be connected to another Git repository hosted on GitHub or Bitbucket. All changes will be synchronised on both platforms, as you can set Google CSR to automatically mirror from GitHub and Bitbucket.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Nermin Hajdarbegovic

Nermin Hajdarbegovic

As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.

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Android Customization: How to Build a UI Component That Does What You Want

It is not uncommon for developers to find themselves in need of a UI component that is either not provided by the platform they are targeting or is, indeed, provided, but lacks a certain property or behavior. The answer to both scenarios is a custom UI component. The Android UI model is inherently customizable, offering the means to create custom UI components in various ways.

11 minute readContinue Reading
Ahmed Alamir

Ahmed Alamir

Ahmed is an Android expert with a passion for intuitive user experience and snappy app performance.

CSS Layout Tutorial: From Classic Approaches to the Latest Techniques

Mastering CSS is an absolute necessity for any solid web designer or developer. This tutorial walks you through the fundamentals of CSS layout principles, from classic CSS2 techniques to the latest approaches in CSS3. Learn more about how to leverage all that CSS has to offer in order to optimize both the user’s experience and the quality of your code.

16 minute readContinue Reading
Laureano Martin Arcanio

Laureano Martin Arcanio

Laureano is a web developer and designer with a variety of skills gained over the last 15 years, working with clients such as Intel.

8 Reasons Why Microsoft Stack Is Still a Viable Choice

In today’s world where there are a lot of choices for writing quality software, it’s easy to overlook some tools that are viable options in developing modern software. These software development tools, in competition with each other, often fluctuate in popularity and developer preferences. Many excellent tools are viable options for any given project. This article provides eight reason in favor of the Microsoft stack and why it is still a reasonable choice for software development today.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Eugene Tsygankov

Eugene Tsygankov

Eugene has a bachelor’s degree in MIS and over two decades of experience. He develops scalable and fault-tolerant full-stack solutions.

Case Study: Using Toptal To Reel In Big Fish

Whether you’re an avid angler or an app developer, you may be interested in taking a closer look at the development of a fishing app, which involved some of your fellow Toptalers.

The goal was to create an app that would be truly useful in a professional fishing setting, while at the same time meeting a hard deadline. Since Fatsack Outdoors wanted to launch the app at one of the biggest fishing tradeshows of the year, the deadline was non-negotiable.

5 minute readContinue Reading
Nermin Hajdarbegovic

Nermin Hajdarbegovic

As a veteran tech writer, Nermin helped create online publications covering everything from the semiconductor industry to cryptocurrency.

OpenCV Tutorial: Real-time Object Detection Using MSER in iOS

Detecting objects of interest in images has always been an interesting challenge in the realm of computer vision, and many approaches have been developed over recent years. As mobile platforms are becoming increasingly powerful, now is the perfect opportunity to develop interesting mobile applications that take advantages of these algorithms. This article walks us through the process of building a simple iOS application for detecting objects in images.

8 minute readContinue Reading
Altaibayar Tseveenbayar

Altaibayar Tseveenbayar

With a master’s degree in AI and 6+ years of professional experience, Altaibayar does full-stack and mobile development with a focus on AR.

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.
Read more

Previously At

Shopify

Most-read Articles

Marcos Henrique da Silva

Creating a Secure REST API in Node.js

By Marcos Henrique da Silva
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