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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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.

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.

15-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.

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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.

13-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

Metaprogramming is a technique in which software programs write and modify other software programs, including themselves. Learn how metaprogramming can be used to optimize and organize your code.

16-minute readContinue Reading

Will Beddow

Will is a full-stack developer with a portfolio that spans a diverse range of industries and technologies. His recent work includes machine learning applications, fintech systems design, cloud orchestration programs, and large corporate software systems. Will is the CTO of a fintech company that builds AI tools for the private equity industry.

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.

Optimize Your Environment for Development and Production: A Pydantic Tutorial, Part 2

Learn how to develop a Django application coupled with pydantic where the development environment matches production.

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Arjaan Buijk

Arjaan is a senior engineer and data scientist who creates mission-critical cloud solutions focused on Rasa for international banks and insurance companies. He architects and teaches large-scale Kubernetes solutions.

An In-depth Look at C++ vs. Java

Deciding on a language can be intimidating when you don’t have deep experience with the available options. This comparison explores the fundamental differences between C++ and Java, and what to consider when choosing between them.

11-minute readContinue Reading

Timothy Mensch

Timothy is an experienced software architect who has created multiple game engines with C++, including one used in more than 100 titles. His extensive background in Java ranges from Android game and application development to industry experience at Amazon, building an Android client for the AWS AppStream service. He has used more than 20 programming languages in his career, several of which he custom created to meet a specific need.

Understanding Twitter Dynamics With R and Gephi: Text Analysis and Centrality

Centrality and text analysis allow users to get more out of their social network data. Here’s how you can leverage them using R and Gephi.

12-minute readContinue Reading

Juan Manuel Ortiz de Zarate

Juan is a developer, data scientist, and doctoral researcher at the University of Buenos Aires where he studies social networks, AI, and NLP. Juan has more than a decade of data science experience and has published papers at ML conferences, including SPIRE and ICCS.

Streamline Your Django Settings With Type Hints: A Pydantic Tutorial, Part 1

Python and pydantic make a powerful runtime combination when validating data and settings, resulting in reduced debugging and a simplified code base.

6-minute readContinue Reading

Arjaan Buijk

PageSpeed Insights Best Practices: Acing Google’s Assessment

Page speed is an important ranking attribute for search engines, making performance optimization a prerequisite for successful sites. Here’s how Google PageSpeed Insights can help identify and rectify performance issues.

11-minute readContinue Reading

Timofey Bugaevsky

Timofey is a CTO and veteran full-stack engineer with over 18 years of experience developing new products and sustaining existing ones. He holds an Engineer’s Degree in Robotics and an MBA.

A Day in the Life of an Engineering Manager

Engineering managers tend to have a wide range of responsibilities. In this article, Karl Hughes, founder of Draft.dev, shares what a typical day in the life of an engineering manager looks like.

7-minute readContinue Reading

Karl Hughes

Karl is a former software engineering manager and CTO turned writer. He’s currently the founder of Draft.dev.

Working With TypeScript and Jest Support: An AWS SAM Tutorial

JavaScript boilerplate is easy enough to come by, but there’s a bit more to starting AWS SAM projects with TypeScript. Here’s how to create an AWS SAM TypeScript project from scratch with Jest support.

10-minute readContinue Reading

Mohammad Faisal

Mohammad is a full-stack developer who has architected several applications on AWS using Lambda, NoSQL, and Node.js. He has extensive experience in optimizing AWS infrastructure for midsized companies.

C# vs. C++: What’s at the Core?

C# and C++ share a similar syntax but cater to different requirements, so which should you focus on? This article examines each language’s features and weighs the pros and cons.

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Jakiša Tomić

Jakiša is a veteran full-stack developer with more than 15 years of experience creating C# and C++ apps on multiple platforms. His portfolio includes work with the Windows API, embedded programming, distributed systems, mixed reality, and DevOps. Jakiša has a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Zagreb.

A Deeper Meaning: Topic Modeling in Python

Colloquial language doesn’t lend itself to computation. That’s where natural language processing steps in. Learn how topic modeling helps computers understand human speech.

8-minute readContinue Reading

Federico Albanese

Federico is a developer and data scientist who has worked at Facebook, where he made machine learning model predictions. He is a Python expert and a university lecturer. His PhD research pertains to graph machine learning.

Unity AI Development: A Finite-state Machine Tutorial

Ever wonder how game developers deliver entertaining interplay with the non-player characters they create? Learn how to develop them yourself in our finite-state machine tutorial.

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.

TypeScript vs. JavaScript: Your Go-to Guide

Considering you can include as much plain JavaScript as you like in your TypeScript project, what factors should you consider when choosing TypeScript for your application? Let’s explore.

10-minute readContinue Reading

Daniele Monesi

Daniele is a full-stack developer and cloud solution architect who has worked with many software environments, such as Java-based back ends, Angular- and React-based front ends, and serverless or hybrid cloud infrastructures.

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.