I’m excited to announce that the dotNetDave No Rest for the Wicked World Tour is rolling into Zürich, Switzerland, for .NET Day Switzerland 2026 on August 25, 2026!

I’m thrilled to be speaking at this event for the first time. It will also be my first visit to Switzerland, and I’m really looking forward to experiencing this beautiful country. If you have recommendations for must-see places, great food, or hidden gems in and around Zürich, please reach out—I’d love to hear them.

Be sure to arrive early and grab a seat near the front. You might just catch a custom dotNetDave guitar pick flying through the air, along with some other fun swag. This session will be packed with energy, practical insights, and plenty of rock ’n’ roll attitude.

Below is information about the session I’ll be presenting. I’d love to see you there! It’s going to be a blast, and I promise you’ll leave with something useful—maybe even a laugh or two.

Don’t miss it!

Röck Yoür Cöde: Stop Guessing — Benchmark Like a Pro

You think your code is fast? Prove it.

Modern .NET developers have more tools than ever—but too many are still guessing when it comes to performance. The result? Slower applications, higher cloud costs, and problems that don’t show up until production.

And here’s the kicker: even AI tools like GitHub Copilot can generate code that compiles, works… and performs terribly. If you’re not measuring it, you’re trusting it—and that’s a risk.

In this session, veteran engineer and author David McCarter (dotNetDave) shows how to cut through the noise and make performance a data-driven discipline. Using BenchmarkDotNet and the DotNetTips.Spargine.Benchmarking library, you’ll learn how to measure execution time, memory allocation, and scalability the right way.

Through live demos and real-world examples, you’ll see just how wrong “common knowledge” about .NET performance can be. You’ll learn how to build benchmarks you can trust, avoid traps like JIT optimizations and setup bias, and turn raw numbers into decisions that matter.

Stop guessing. Stop trusting assumptions.

Measure it. Prove it. Ship code that performs.

Attendees will learn:

• How to build accurate, repeatable benchmarks using BenchmarkDotNet
• How to eliminate measurement noise and avoid misleading results
• How to compare multiple implementations and identify the fastest approach
• How to measure memory allocation and understand its impact on performance
• How to apply benchmarking in real-world, cloud-based scenarios
• How to integrate benchmarking into the development lifecycle before release

Don’t miss this high-energy session where you’ll learn to rock your code—and prove it performs like a pro.

Resources

• Boost Your .NET Projects with Spargine: Simplifying Real-World Data Generation for .NET Benchmarking and Testing
  https://bit.ly/SpargineTester
• Benchmark Your Microsoft .NET Code Like dotNetDave!
  https://bit.ly/BenchmarkLikeDotNetDave
• Boost Your .NET Projects: Copilot, Benchmarks, and the Truth About Faster Code
  https://bit.ly/copilot-code-optimization
• The .NET Host Process: What Runs Before Main() and Why It Sometimes Hangs
  https://bit.ly/dotnet-host-process
• NuGet
  https://www.nuget.org/profiles/davidmccarter
• GitHub
  https://bit.ly/spargine-benchmarking

🎸 Rockin’ Zurich: Speaking at .NET Day Switzerland

I had an incredible time in Zurich attending and speaking at .NET Day Switzerland! This was my first time visiting Switzerland—and my first time giving a conference session in an actual movie theater. I have to say, I really liked it. And when your presentation is being projected using the same equipment they use for movies, it might just be the best conference projector ever!

Fabian, Manuel, Thomas, and all the volunteers did an outstanding job organizing the conference. One detail that really stood out to me was the support they provided to every speaker. Each session had someone from the conference team there to help with the microphone, troubleshoot any issues, and make sure everything stayed on schedule. As a speaker, that kind of support makes a huge difference.

The conference featured a wide variety of topics, with—as you might expect these days—plenty of sessions focused on AI. They also had two keynotes, one to kick off the conference and another to close out the day.

Taking the Stage

My session, “Röck Yoür Cöde: Stop Guessing—Benchmark Like a Pro,” was scheduled in the final time slot before the closing keynote.

Being near the end of a full conference day can sometimes be challenging. Attendees have already absorbed hours of technical content, the caffeine is wearing off, and everyone is starting to think about what comes next.

But I had a great crowd!

Even that late in the day, I managed to get the audience laughing—and anytime I can teach developers something useful and make them laugh, I call that a successful session.

I also received a lot of great feedback afterward, not only from attendees but from several other speakers as well. I had a few technical glitches to work through during the presentation, but that’s part of speaking live. You deal with it, keep the show moving, and rock on.

From the feedback I received, it seems I pulled it off.

And I can’t wait to do it again.

I would absolutely love to return to Zurich someday and speak at .NET Day Switzerland again.

Scenes from .NET Day Switzerland

Below are some of the photos I took during the conference, capturing the speakers, attendees, venue, and some of the moments that made the event so much fun.

You can see even more in the video below.

dotNetDave Goes to .NET Day Switzerland

The video brings together photos and video from my experience speaking at .NET Day Switzerland along with highlights from my sightseeing adventures around Zurich.

Switzerland is absolutely beautiful. During this trip, I also got to see the Swiss Alps for the very first time, which was definitely one of the highlights of the journey.

The Zurich area actually reminded me quite a bit of Northern California in some ways—the climate, the scenery, and the combination of water, hills, and mountains made parts of it feel surprisingly familiar.

Between exploring Zurich, meeting developers from around the world, reconnecting with fellow speakers, and getting another opportunity to rock the stage and share what I’ve learned about software engineering, this was a trip I won’t soon forget.

dotNetDave (David McCarter) Goes To .NET Dev Day Switzerland

Sightseeing in Zurich

Below are the photos I took while sightseeing in the Zurich area.

https://mccarterphotography.smugmug.com/Travel/Z%C3%BCrich-Switzerland