The Best of Toptal
10 most popular Toptal articles, as voted by our community.
Toptal is a network of the world’s top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on demand.
Toptal on Java
Server-side I/O Performance: Node vs. PHP vs. Java vs. Go
Clearly, Go is the winner here, followed by Java, Node and finally PHP.
Toptal on Javascript
The Comprehensive Guide to JavaScript Design Patterns
Design patterns are reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in software design. Let's take a look at how they work and explore some popular JavaScript design patterns.
Toptal on Product Design
COVID-19: the ultimate Design Thinking use case
Could designers use the design thinking process to solve emergent problems and come up with innovative solutions for dealing with COVID-19?
«A sea of data coming in is good, but data alone doesn’t speak and doesn’t help make informed decisions. It’s tantamount to drinking from a firehose.»
Toptal on Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement Learning: A Deep Dive
This is a deep dive into deep reinforcement learning. We will tackle a concrete problem with modern libraries such as TensorFlow, TensorBoard, Keras, and OpenAI Gym. You will learn how to implement…
Toptal on Visual Communication
The Principles of Design and Their Importance
One of the most difficult parts of talking about the principles of design is figuring out just how many principles there actually are (are…
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
Optimize Your Site for Conversions: 7 Strategies That Work
A client just hired you to design a landing page for their new offering. They want more than just a beautiful design -- they want a page that converts. What do you do? You read this post, which…
Acing Google's PageSpeed Insights Assessment
Good PageSpeed Insights scores pave the way to success. Here's why.
Buggy JavaScript Code: The 10 Most Common Mistakes JavaScript Developers Make
If you need help figuring out why your JavaScript isn't working, consult this list of the 10 most common JavaScript mistakes from a skilled engineer.
Ensuring Clean Code: A Look at Python, Parameterized
We’ll explore the application of parameterization and how it relates to mainstream design patterns such as dependency injection, strategy, template method, and others. In Python parameterized, many of…
Creating Web Apps with Declarative Programming and FSMs
Adopting declarative-style programming techniques allows your team to create web applications that are easier to extend and maintain.
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. is one of more than 10k sources we monitor.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
How can I report a problem?
When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
Who uses Refind?
250k+ smart people start their day with Refind. To learn something new. To get inspired. To move forward. Our apps have a 4.9/5 rating.
Is Refind free?
Yes, it’s free!
How can I sign up?
Head over to our homepage and sign up by email or with your Twitter or Google account.