Author: Patrick Smacchia
My dad being an early programmer in the 70's, I have been fortunate to switch from playing with Lego, to program my own micro-games, when I was still a kid. Since then I never stop programming.
I graduated in Mathematics and Software engineering. After a decade of C++ programming and consultancy, I got interested in the brand new .NET platform in 2002. I had the chance to write the best-seller book (in French) on .NET and C#, published by O'Reilly and also did manage some academic and professional courses on the platform and C#.
Over my consulting years I built an expertise about the architecture, the evolution and the maintenance challenges of large & complex real-world applications. It seemed like the spaghetti & entangled monolithic legacy concerned every sufficiently large team. As a consequence, I got interested in static code analysis and started the project NDepend in 2004.
Nowadays NDepend is a full-fledged Independent Software Vendor (ISV). With more than 12.000 client companies, including many of the Fortune 500 ones, NDepend offers deeper insight and full control on their application to a wide range of professional users around the world.
I live with my wife and our twin kids Léna and Paul in the beautiful island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
Unveiling the Impressive Features of Upcoming C# 12
Microsoft unveils new features in C# 12 Preview. C# 12 along with .NET 8 will be officially released in November 2023. Let’s explore the latest impressive enhancements in this post....
C# async await explained (2023)
In 2012, C#5 was released. This version introduced two new keywords async and await. At that time CPU clock speed reached an upper limit imposed by physical laws. But chip...
Improve Visual Studio Build Performance
Time is your most precious asset and slow build is high in the list of developer’s productivity killers. With slow build the penalty is twofold: not only the time taken...
Class vs Struct in C#: Making Informed Choices
In C# programming, choosing the right data type between classes and structs is a crucial decision that impacts application performance and design. This article presents a concise comparison of Class vs...
Improved .NET Debugging Experience with Source Link
Source Link is a Microsoft technology that lets .NET developers debug the source code of NuGet packages referenced by their applications. I underlined source code because at debugging time the...
.NET Micro-Optimization and Refactoring Trick
Recently, I made an interesting observation regarding Dictionary<string,T>: the method TryGetValue() is faster when building with new Dictionary<string,T>(StringComparer.Ordinal). This performance difference can be attributed to the fact that StringComparer.Ordinal performs...
C#12 class and struct Primary Constructors
Since C#9 we have the convenient primary constructor syntax for class record (or just record) and struct record: [crayon-650b765deb7f8213461133/] C#12 introduces primary constructor for non-record class and struct but beware,...
In the Jungle of .NET Obfuscator Tools
In this article I will explain our genuine experience with various .NET Obfuscator Tools. We end up explaining that .NET Reactor is the one we choose to obfuscate our code...
.NET Decompilers Compared: A Comprehensive Guide (2023)
Looking to reverse engineer or disassemble some .NET code? Then learning how to decompile .NET assemblies is a an essential skill for any .NET developer or security engineer. Fortunately, there...
Clean Architecture for ASP.NET Core Solution: A Case Study
In this post we’ll explore the Jason Taylor’s CleanArchitecture .NET solution template available here on github recently updated to support .NET 7. It illustrates well how an ASP.NET Core application...
C# ValueTuple
C# 7.0 introduced Value Tuples which represent both a set of structures in the .NET Base Class Library (BCL) and some convenient C# syntax. Value tuples are available in all...
The NDepend GitHub Action is now available!
NDepend is a tool for .NET developers and teams that assesses the code quality within the IDE and the CI-CD process. With 17 years of existence and over 12.000 companies...
Deconstruction in C#
C# 7.0 introduced the deconstruction syntax. It allows developers to extract in a single expression, properties of an object or elements of a tuple and then to assign them to...
The new .NET 7.0 IParsable<TSelf> interface
As I explained in the post C# 11 static abstract members, C# 11 let’s write static abstract members in interface. This feature was mostly introduced to implement the new .NET...
C# 11 required members
C# 11 proposes the new keyword required that can apply to an instance property or an instance field declaration within a class, a record or a struct. [crayon-650b765ded72d364336858/] This keyword...
C# 11 File Scoped Types
C#11 added the file scoped types feature: a new file modifier that can be applied to any type definition to restrict its usage to the current file. This way we...
Managed pointers, Span, ref struct, C#11 ref fields and the scoped keyword
The concept of managed pointer exists in the NET runtime and C# since the inception of the platform in the early 2000. Managed pointers belong mostly to the pointer world,...
.NET Build Improvement: Stop Wasting Resources
I am working on .NET development full-time since 2002 and there is a point that still annoys me after all these years: the default .NET build behavior leads to a...
Architecture of a .NET Application: Case Studies
Recently the question Number of projects per solution has been asked on reddit which led to interesting debates. Of course the answer depends largely on the overall size and business...
C# 11 Raw String Literals Explained
C# 11 introduces Raw String Literals. Undoubtedly this feature will become very popular because it represents an elegant way to solve some issues with actual string literal. Let’s have a...
Visual Studio vs. Jetbrains Rider Performance
I work daily with Visual Studio since 1997 but still use Rider from time to time to keep up with progresses since we plan to also integrate our NDepend extension...
C# 11 static abstract members
C# 11 proposed interface members declared as static abstract. This is useful to handle both: Polymorphism at the type level, for example when abstracting the concept of zero accross numeric...
WPF / Winforms UI Refactoring: A Case Study
WPF and Winforms are still so massively used that Microsoft fully supports those technologies in .NET Core, .NET 5, 6 , 7 and so on. However WPF and Winforms are...
C# Pattern Matching Explained
Since the C# version 7, C# has support for pattern matching. C# pattern matching is here to simplify complex if-else statements into more compact and readable code. Pattern matching does...
Improve C# code performance with Span<T>
C# 7.2 introduced the structure System.Span<T>. First we’ll present a concrete example where Span<T> helps achieve better performance. Then we’ll explain what makes Span<T> so special. Span<T> primary goal is...
How to collect return values from Parallel.ForEach?
Today I took 10 minutes to answer the 9 years old stackoverflow’s question: How do I collect return values from Parallel.ForEach? I though the improved solution deserved a quick blog...
C# Binary Search: Fast find of a free slot between 0 and uint.MaxValue
When a user is exporting a result to a document with NDepend, the tool needs to find a file name not taken in the temporary dir. Generating a GUID for...
Modern C# Hello World
With Visual Studio 2022 when you create a new console project based on .NET 6, the Hello World source code generated is now as simple as that: [crayon-650b765df09a5221121662/] Nice and...
Solution to Visual Studio 2022 messing up Visual Studio 2019
As all .NET developers I am quite excited by Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6 going RTM. However I noticed that Visual Studio 2022 RTM install messed up Visual Studio...
5x Lessons Learned from Migrating a Large Legacy to .NET 5/6
In January 2020 I wrote the post Not planning now to migrate your .NET 4.8 legacy, is certainly a mistake. Hopefully we followed our own advice and have been migrated...