The Moth

Maximizing .NET Performance

.NET Framework Tour from a Performance Perspective - 4stars

There are no other books on .NET Performance so, when this one fell in my hands, it put a smile on my face (sad, I know). When I got to the end, I was not disappointed. Around 250 well-written pages over 15 chapters and, as you'd expect, you can delve into it in random order, making it a good reference book. Even so, I read it cover to cover. The first two chapters lay the ground; the last chapter provides generic advice on troubleshooting and the 12 chapters in-between focus on specific .NET areas: a framework tour from a performance perspective. Naturally, a subject of this nature assumes the reader has some .NET experience and targets the Intermediate/Advanced level.

Don't expect material on GUI (Windows.Forms), Database (ADO.NET) and Web (ASP.NET); rather a discussion on elements that every application is built on (Type design/implementation, Strings/Text/RegEx, Collections, Language Specifics, GC & Object Lifetime, Exceptions, Security, Threading, IO/Serialisation, PInvoke, CLR). I challenge you to find a chapter that does not teach you at least one thing you were unaware of before. We have to sum it up with the great technical phrase: "It is all great stuff".

There are no axioms presented, and readers expecting a "cookbook" will be disappointed. Every claim is backed up with a reference to a testcase and even then, only after we have delved under the covers to see *why* something is slow or *how* a change makes something faster. By taking this approach, the reader should be able to repeat the investigation/tests for newer/other versions of the framework. So, having just mentioned how there is a cross-reference to specific testcases, I have hinted at what is one of the best contributions of this book: A .NET Benchmark Test Harness. This is described in the appendix of the book and the code/binaries can be obtained from the publisher's site.

Now how about something like this for the Compact Framework?