How I accidentally made the fastest C# CSV parser

How I accidentally made the fastest C# CSV parser
30 minutes by Bepis

ASCII characters always occupy exactly one byte in UTF-8, meaning a CSV parser only needs to watch for single bytes to find commas, quotes, and newlines. Using SIMD instructions, a CPU can scan 32 bytes at once for these characters, cutting processing time by around 10x compared to a basic loop. Building on this, a fast CSV parser can locate field boundaries in one pass and only decode the actual text when requested. The result beats most existing C# CSV parsers in the majority of benchmarks tested.

Become an Expert with Parallel Programming in C#
sponsored by Code Traveler LLC

Tasks, Collections, Channels, PLINQ, Parallel.ForEach — C# gives you powerful concurrency tools, but knowing which one to use can feel overwhelming. In this hands-on course, Microsoft MVP Brandon Minnick cuts through the confusion, teaching you parallel programming, deadlock avoidance, concurrent collections, (and more!) to help your .NET apps run faster and scale further.

Evaluating CRON and RRule expressions in .NET
3 minutes by Gérald Barré

Gérald describes how the Meziantou.Framework.Scheduling NuGet package helps you work with recurring date patterns. It supports both CRON expressions and iCalendar recurrence rules. CRON works well for simple schedules, while RRule handles more complex patterns and works with calendar apps like Google Calendar and Outlook. Both let you parse a rule and get a list of upcoming dates with just a few lines of code.

Writing a .NET garbage collector in C#: Interior pointers
26 minutes by Kevin Gosse

Kevin explains how a .NET garbage collector handles interior pointers—references to data inside objects. These pointers must keep objects alive, but they don’t point to object starts, making them hard to track. The solution is a “brick table,” which maps memory regions to nearby objects, allowing efficient lookup. Kevin shows how to implement this and update it during garbage collection.

How to speed up your ASP.NET API with in-memory cache and Redis
14 minutes by Anton Martyniuk

ASP.NET Core's Output Cache middleware caches full HTTP responses at the pipeline level, so your database and business logic are never touched on repeat requests. You add it with a single attribute or policy, and it handles expiration, vary-by rules, and tag-based eviction cleanly. Swap the default memory store for Redis to share the cache across multiple app instances. For authenticated endpoints, always scope cache keys to the user ID to prevent data leaking between users.

The evolution of my coding journey: From Pascal to AI
16 minutes by Christian Nagel

Looking back at his coding journey, Christian describes how much his experience has evolved. From typing Pascal in a bare terminal to collaborating with AI, each stage brought new tools, abstractions, and possibilities. He walks through the major technology stages that shaped his development career and how each one raised the bar on productivity, user experience, and software quality.

And the most popular article from the last issue was:

• Architectural tests in .NET