Systems Programming with C# and .NET: Building robust system solutions with C# 12 and .NET 8

✍ Scribed by Dennis Vroegop

• Publisher: Packt Publishig Pvt Ltd
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 648
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Kickstart systems programming with C# 12 and .NET Core 8, learn low-level secrets, optimize performance, and secure deployments for high-performance application development

Key Features
Engage in hands-on exercises to effectively apply systems programming concepts
Gain insights into Linux and embedded systems and broaden your development capabilities
Learn how to deploy and maintain applications securely in diverse production environments

Book Description
If you want to explore the vast potential of C# and .NET to build high-performance applications, then this book is for you. Written by a 17-time awardee of the Microsoft MVP award, this book delves into low-level programming with C# and .NET.

The book starts by introducing fundamental concepts such as low-level APIs, memory management, and performance optimization. Each chapter imparts practical skills, guiding you through threads, file I/O, and network protocols. With a focus on real-world applications, you’ll learn how to secure systems, implement effective logging, and deploy applications seamlessly. The book particularly emphasizes debugging, profiling, and addressing challenges unique to multithreaded and asynchronous code. You’ll also gain insights into cybersecurity essentials to help you safeguard data and establish secure communications. Moreover, a dedicated chapter on systems programming in Linux will help you broaden your horizons and explore cross-platform development. For those venturing into embedded systems, the final chapter offers hands-on guidance.

By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to deploy, distribute, and maintain applications in production systems.

What you will learn
Explore low-level APIs for enhanced control and performance
Optimize applications with memory management strategies
Develop secure, efficient networking applications using C# and .NET
Implement effective logging, monitoring, and metrics for system health
Navigate Linux environments for cross-platform proficiency
Interact with hardware devices, GPIO pins, and embedded systems
Deploy and distribute apps securely with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
Debug and profile efficiently, addressing multithreaded challenges

Who this book is for
This book is for C# developers and programmers looking to deepen their expertise in systems programming with .NET Core. Professionals aspiring to architect high-performance applications, system engineers, and those involved in deploying and maintaining applications in production environments will also find this book useful. A basic understanding of C# and .NET Core is recommended, making it suitable for developers who are getting started with systems programming in C# and .NET Core.

✦ Table of Contents

Systems Programming with C# and .NET
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewers
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
Download a free PDF copy of this book
Overview of Systems Programming
Let’s define systems programming
When is a system user-facing and when is it not?
A better definition
Using C# and .NET in systems programming
Higher-level languages for systems programming
Kernel mode and user mode
Why use .NET?
What is .NET anyway?
.NET, .NET Framework, .NET Standard – what is all this?
Programming languages – a choice to make
Now what?
Setting up your development environment
1
The One with the Low-Level Secrets
Technical requirements
What are low-level APIs, and how do they differ from higher-level abstractions?
Overview of .NET Core runtime components (CLR, BCL)
CLR
BCL
Using P/Invoke to call low-level APIs
Dealing with errors
Issues when debugging code with low-level APIs
Error handling
Interoperability
Debugging tools
Compatibility and portability
Documentation and community support
Next steps
2
The One Where Speed Matters
Technical requirements
Setting up the stage
Accessibility
Hosting costs
Planned obsolescence
Energy usage
Which integer is the fastest?
The CTS
Value types and reference types
Classes and structs
Floating-point numbers
Where types live – the difference between value types and reference types
The stack and the heap
Boxing and unboxing
Hidden boxing and unboxing
Choosing the right data structures and algorithms
Arrays, Lists, and LinkedLists
Stacks and queues
HashSets and lists
SortedList, SortedDictionary, and Dictionary
Dictionary or last of tuples/objects
For versus ForEach
Strings
Use StringBuilder for concatenation
Interning strings
Use String.Concat or String.Join
Comparison
Preallocating StringBuilder
Writing unsafe code
Compiler optimizations
Aggressive optimization
The optimize flag
Next steps
3
The One with the Memory Games
Technical requirements
GC and its generations
The LOH
Finalizers
IDisposable
Memory-saving tips and tricks
Unsafe code and pointers in C#
Next steps
4
The One with the Thread Tangles
Technical requirements
Concurrency and threading – the basics
The beginnings of concurrency – the IRQ
Cooperative and preemptive multitasking
Threads in C#
Win32 threads
.NET threads
Tasks and Parallel Library – the TPL
Async/await
Task.Wait() and Task.Result
Synchronizing threads
Synchronization – how do we do that?
Synchronization with async/await
Canceling a thread
Thread-safe programming techniques
Lock()
Records
Avoid static members and classes
Using the volatile keyword
Concurrent collections in .NET
Next steps
5
The One with the Filesystem Chronicles
Technical requirements
File writing basics
FileStream
Even faster – Win32
File reading basics
Reading binary data
Directory operations
The Path class
The Directory class
The DirectoryInfo class
File system monitoring
Asynchronous I/O
The naïve approach
Using CancellationTokens
BufferedStream
File system security
Encryption basics
Symmetric encryption and decryption
Asymmetric encryption and decryption
File compression
Compressing some data
Decompressing some data
Serialization – JSON and Binary
JSON serialization
Binary serialization
Next steps
6
The One Where Processes Whisper
Technical requirements
Overview of IPC and its importance in modern computing
Windows Messages
A sample
Working with pipes for local IPC
Named pipes
Anonymous pipes
Using sockets to establish network-based IPC
Networking 101
A TCP-based chat app
UDP
Using shared memory to exchange data between processes
Overview of RPCs and how to use them for IPC
JSON RPC
Overview of gRPC and how to use it for IPC
Differences between JSON RPC and gRPC
Next steps
7
The One with the Operating System Tango
Technical requirement
The Windows Registry
What is the Windows Registry?
How to access and store data with the Windows Registry
Comparing the Windows Registry to JSON settings files
Worker Services
Docker support
Dissecting the Worker Service
Controlling the lifetime of the service
Wrapping up Worker Services
WMI
How to use WMI
Reading the CPU temperature
Reading the BIOS
Controlling the Windows Update service
Watching USB devices
Registry and WMI – risks and how to avoid them
The Windows Registry
Potential risks when dealing with WMI
Next steps
8
The One with the Network Navigation
Technical requirements
The fundamentals
A walk down the OSI layers
Exploring the System.Net namespace
Understanding HTTP/HTTPS
FTP
Email protocols
Working with the System.Net.Sockets namespace
Steps to take when using sockets
IPv4 and IPv6
Looking up time with sockets
Async, non-blocking networking
Making asynchronous calls
Networking performance
Connection pooling
Caching
Compression and serialization
Keep-alive connections
Networking errors and time-outs
Using the HTTPClient wisely
Implementing retries with Polly
The circuit breaker pattern
Validating network availability
Monitoring and logging
Next steps
9
The One with the Hardware Handshakes
Technical requirements
Connecting to serial ports
The path to the hardware
Why do we care?
A word about parity, data sizes, and stop bits
Working with an Arduino
Receiving serial data with .NET
Faking a serial device
Making it foolproof
Reasons things go haywire
Hardening your code
Next steps
10
The One with the Systems Check-Ups
Technical requirements
Available logging frameworks
Default logger in .NET
NLog
Serilog
Comparing the logging frameworks
Monitoring your applications
Monitoring with Seq
Performance counters
Prometheus
Other platforms for monitoring
What you should be monitoring or logging
Next steps
11
The One with the Debugging Dances
Technical requirements
Introducing debugging
Debugging and profiling – an overview
Debugging
Profiling
Debugging 101
Debug builds versus Release builds
Breakpoints
Debug windows
Diagnostic Tools
Debugging multithreaded and asynchronous code
Parallel Watch
Debugging deadlocks with Parallel Stacks and Thread windows
Profiling application performance
The prime application
Profiling in Visual Studio
Benchmarking different solutions
Other tools
Debugging tools
Profiling tools
Next steps
12
The One with the Security Safeguards
Technical requirements
Security for system programmers
What could happen if we have a vulnerability?
How to protect yourself
Working with strings
Protecting settings
Reading encrypted data
Where are the keys?
Handling strings in memory
Using key management
Using the Azure Key Vault
Using environment variables
Using the right privilege level
Admin-level scenarios
Impersonating as an admin
How to transmit network data securely
How HTTPS works
Certificates and certificate authorities
Creating a development certificate
Securing TCP streams
Next steps
13
The One with the Deployment Dramas
Technical requirements
From development to production
Publishing and file copy
Publish using Visual Studio
Publishing using the CLI
Using Azure DevOps and GitHub
Deploying to Azure
Enabling continuous integration in Azure DevOps
Enabling CI from GitHub
Building installers with Visual Studio
Building a simple installer
Writing a Custom Action
Incorporating the custom action in the setup
Using Docker
Adding Docker support to your background worker
Deploying your Docker images
Production-ready Docker repository
Next steps
14
The One with the Linux Leaps
Technical requirements
An overview of Linux
A short history of Linux
What is Linux?
A quick primer to use Linux
Basic commands
Elevated privileges
Developing for Linux
Installing .NET on Linux
Running a .NET background worker on Linux
Make your code cross-platform
How code can help you
Writing services for Linux
The service description
Installing the service
Uninstalling the service
Handling signals
Summing up
Let’s recap
Index
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