From Atari to Sep: Unleashing the Power of Performance in Programming with Niels Rassmussen

The Modern .NET Show

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Show Notes

Welcome to The Modern .NET Show! Formerly known as The .NET Core Podcast, we are the go-to podcast for all .NET developers worldwide and I am your host Jamie "GaProgMan" Taylor.

In this episode, I spoke with Niels Rasmussen about a CSV parser he wrote called Sep - one of the fastest CSV parses in .NET - and the the mysteries of performance optimization and mechanical sympathy.

"And I just got hooked by it. It has to be faster. It has to be faster than the fastest known to man. So that's what I worked on a lot and that's what I find fun. I'm very passionate about performance, mechanical sympathy, all that. That's really what I dig, things I read about and stuff like that." — Niels Rasmussen

Along the way we discuss the power of simplicity, the importance of understanding hardware intricacies, and the birth of Niels' lightning-fast CSV parsing library, Sep. From exploring different programming paradigms to dissecting the legendary Doom source code, this podcast is a must-listen for developers seeking to enhance their skills and unravel the secrets of software development

In preparation for this episode, Niels actually provided a veritable cornucopia of performance-related stuff - from important points to links to blog posts and other resources. There was no way that we could include them all in this episode, so I have gotten his permission and have been able to supply them as a PDF, linked at the end of the show notes page on the website. How cool is that!

So let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in dotnet new podcast and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET.

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Full Show Notes

The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-6/from-atari-to-sep-unleashing-the-power-of-performance-in-programming-with-niels-rassmussen

Useful Links

• Sep
• Niels' blog
• pi-hole
• Jellyfin
• The original source code for DOOM
• Game Engine Black Book: DOOM Edition
• NCsvPerf by Joel Verhagen
• CsvHelper
• Sylvan
• AVX
• hardware intrinsics
• Vector256
• Pack With Unsigned Saturation
• Extract Most Significant Bit
• BitOperations
• TrailingZeroCount
• Disasmo
• Peter Cordes
• pshufb
• SIMDized check which bytes are in a set
• Introduction to vectorization with Vector128 and Vector256 by Adam Sitnik
• BenchmarkDotNet
• 10x Performance with SIMD Vectorized Code in C#/.NET by Alexander Mutel
• Niels on GitHub
• Niels on Twitter
• Niels on Mastodon
• Introducing Sep
• Supporting the show:
  • Leave a rating or review
  • Buy the show a coffee
  • Become a patron
• Getting in touch:
  • via the contact page
  • joining the Discord
• Music created by Mono Memory Music, licensed to RJJ Software for use in The Modern .NET Show

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