Application Performance: The Best of the Web

Wisdom A deep understanding and realization […] resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions. It is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. – Wikipedia

The really REALLY short version

Share what you know about ASP.NET application performance for a chance to win a Microsoft Surface, and then get your name credited in a slick eBook with top-notch production values. For more details, read on…

We can’t wait to learn from you!

A little more detail

We’re writing a book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it.

We know that there’s a huge amount of web developer wisdom that never gets shared, and we want to find those golden nuggets of knowledge and experience, and make sure everyone can learn from them. Right now, we want to find out about your top tips, hard-won lessons, and sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing application performance problems.

If you work with .NET and SQL, even better – a lot of application performance relies on the interaction with the database, so we want to hear from you!

“How Do You Want Me To Be Involved?”

Right! Details!

We want you, our most excellent readers, to email us with the Best Advice you would give to other developers for getting the best performance out of their applications. It doesn’t matter if your advice is for newbies or veterans, .NET or SQL – so long as it’s about application performance, we want to hear from you.

(And if you think that there’s developer wisdom out there that “everyone knows”, a) I’m willing to bet you could find someone who doesn’t know about it, and b) it probably bears repeating anyway!)

“I’m Interested. What Can You Do For Me?”

Excellent question.

For starters, there’s a chance to win a Microsoft Surface (the tablet, not the table-top). Once all the ASP.NET Wisdom has been collected, tallied, and labelled, it will then be weighed and measured by a team of expert judges (whose identities are still a closely-guarded secret). The top tip in both SQL & .NET categories will each win their author their very own MS Surface.

But that’s not all! We can also give you… immortality!

More details? Ok.

We’ll be collecting all of the tips sent in by our readers (and we can’t wait to learn from you all,) and with the help of our Simple-Talk editors, we will publish and distribute your combined and documented knowledge as a free, community-created, professionally typeset eBook.

You will naturally be credited by name / pseudonym / twitter handle / GitHub username / StackOverflow profile / Whatever, as the clearly ingenious author of hot performance tips.

Some examples for inspiration…

Here are a couple of examples of the kind of thing we’re looking for:

Prefer StringBuilder to string concatenation

Strings in .NET are immutable, so adding strings together with the ‘+’ operator creates a new string object every time. Use the StringBuilder class if you’re doing a significant number of append operations.

Set initial capacities on Dictionaries and Lists if you know they’ll grow large

As your collection grows, .NET may need to re-allocate the underlying storage, which can be expensive. Avoid this by specifying how large you expect your collections to be.

The Not-Very-Fine Print

Here’s the breakdown:

  • We want to bring together the best application performance knowledge from ASP.NET developers.
  • Closing date for submissions will be 9am GMT, December 11th.
  • Submissions should be made by email – michaela.murray@red-gate.com
  • Submissions will be judged by a panel of expert judges (who will be revealed soon).
  • The top submission in both the SQL & .NET categories will each win a Microsoft Surface.
  • ALL the tips which make it through the judging process will be polished by Simple-Talk editors, and turned into a professionally typeset eBook, which will be freely available, and promoted alongside the ANTS Performance Profiler tool.
  • Anyone whose entry makes it into the book will be clearly and profusely credited in the method of their choice (or can remain anonymous.)