JavaScript

Software engineers are always searching for the best tools and guides to help them be more productive and allow them to spend less time reading long technical specifications. Today, Toptal is pleased to present a new resource to the community: the JavaScript Cheat Sheet - ES6 and Beyond. Toptal's JavaScript Cheat Sheet is a quick, easily understandable reference guide. It is free to download and includes all the new and exciting features introduced with ES6 as well as the future experimental features from ES7.

In a nutshell, declarative programming consists of instructing a program on what needs to be done, instead of telling it how to do it. This approach involves providing a domain-specific language (DSL) for expressing what the user wants. This DSL shields users from messy low-level constructs while still achieving the desired end-state. While declarative programming offers advantages over the imperative approach it replaces, it’s not as straightforward as it may seem. In this comprehensive article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Federico Pereiro outlines his experience with declarative tools and explains how you can make declarative programming work for you.

Today, writing applications in languages that compile to JavaScript is a very common practice. Scala developers, for example, can use Scala.js and have the same language for both the server and the client. That said, Scala's compiler and standard dependency management tools are too limiting in the modern JavaScript world. In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Michele Sciabarra shows us how to integrate Scala.js with the plethora of JavaScript modules available on NPM, using tools like Browserify, and explains how to do this without even having to install Node.js.

Node-RED, built on Node.js, is a tool designed for programming visually without having to write any code. It comes equipped with a browser-based flow editor that allows hardware devices and APIs to be connected with each other easily, making it an ideal tool for rapidly developing programs for IoT devices. In this article, Toptal freelance software engineer Jesús Darío Rivera walks us through the process of building a simple program using Node-RED and Netbeast along with a virtual light bulb plugin that mimics the capabilities of a real smart bulb.

Streams are a powerful construct in Node.js and in I/O driven programming in general. Gulp, a tool for task automation, leverages streams in elegant ways to allow developers to enhance their build workflow. In this article, Toptal engineer Mikhail Angelov gives us some insight into how Gulp works with streams by showing us step-by-step how to build a Gulp-like build automation tool.

Ionic is extremely popular at the moment, and it has revolutionized the hybrid application industry in a way that nobody could have imagined. However, over time, the best practices and tooling for Ionic have not progressed in the same way. As a result, the number of pitfalls that developers need to look out for when working with Ionic is still high. In this article, Toptal Freelance Software Engineer Julien Renaux outlines the most common mistakes that Ionic developers should know.

Writing code that is easily testable takes some effort and planning. However, some patterns exist that can be used to write simple and functional code, making it easier to test them when the time comes. In this article, Toptal engineer Joshua Mock shares some useful tips and patterns for writing testable code in JavaScript that are both simple to understand and simple to implement.

Meteor is a framework for rapidly building real-time JavaScript web applications. It can be used to build complex applications with amazing ease. However, that can often result in adoption of bad development practices and poorly structured code. In this article, Toptal engineer Darion Cassel shares some simple ways to improve the structure of your next Meteor-based web application without resorting to complicated boilerplates and scaffolding tools.

Modern web browsers offer a number of different APIs and mechanisms to storing data on the client-side. But are all of these options created equal? In this article, Toptal engineer Stephen Villee demystifies the various client-side storage options available in modern web browsers and explains how each of these can play a role in storing session data on the client-side.