Reference Type & Structure Performance

If you want your .NET code to truly shred performance, you need to understand one of the most fundamental choices you make as a developer: reference types vs. structures. This isn’t just academic—it’s the difference between smooth, high-performance execution and hidden bottlenecks dragging your app down.

Classes (reference types) live on the heap and bring the Garbage Collector into the mix. Structs (value types) are leaner, often living on the stack, delivering faster allocations and less overhead when used correctly. Choose wrong, and you’re paying a performance tax you didn’t even know existed.

This page is packed with real-world, benchmark-driven insights that break down when to use classes, structs, and records—and when not to. No fluff. No guesswork. Just practical guidance to help you make smarter, faster decisions in your code.

Bottom line: if you’re serious about building high-performance .NET applications, you can’t afford to wing it here. Master these differences, and you’ll write code that hits like a power chord instead of a dull thud.

Reference Type & Structure Performance: Best Practices

Everything That Every .NET Developer Needs to Know About Disposable Types: Part 1  – Properly Disposing Objects

Everything That Every .NET Developer Needs to Know About Disposable Types: Part  2 – Properly Implementing the IDisposable Interface

Optimizing Hash Code Generation in .NET: A Performance Comparison

Reference Type & Structure Performance: Disposable Types

Reference Type & Structure Performance: Constant vs. Read-only Property

Reference Type & Structure Performance: Hashing Classes, Records, and Structures

Structure Performance: Implementing Operators

Reference Type & Structure Performance: Override Object Virtual Methods

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