Who this book is for
People writing systems software are not junior developers. Ideally, you have a couple of years of experience developing software with C# and .NET. I will not explain what a variable is or how a while-loop differs from a for-loop. You know how to use NuGet. If I ask you to switch from Debug to Release mode in Visual Studio, you know what I am asking you to do.
But I do not expect you to know what instructions a CPU uses. I will explain those when we reach that point in the book. So there is no need to be on that low level just yet.
This book is for people who want to write system software. System software is software that is usually not visible to the regular user. However, it is essential to the good working of the complete software ecosystem running on your systems.
This means that you must have a passion for programs that run fast and are stable. This also means that the software we write is not the easiest to maintain: readability often decreases as performance increases. This is not for the faint-hearted: writing this kind of software is hard-core development. But if you are curious about how your programs really work deep inside the heart of the machine, this is the book for you.
The lessons learned here can, of course, be applied to all sorts of projects. Performance and stability can benefit all programs. So, if you are ready to take your C# and .NET skills to the next level, follow along!
