SSE4.1 is one of the most useful refinement steps in the SSE family. It did not introduce wider vectors, new XMM registers, or the newer AVX encoding model. Instead, it filled many gaps that made SSE2, SSE3, and SSSE3 code awkward. Where SSE3 mostly improved floating-point horizontal operations, and SSSE3…
SSSE3 is one of the most useful but most poorly named SIMD extensions in the x86 family. The name stands for Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3, and the extra “S” is important. SSSE3 is not the same thing as SSE3. It is a later extension, with a very different focus.…
SSE3 is one of the easiest SIMD instruction sets to misunderstand. Compared with MMX, SSE, and SSE2, it did not introduce a new vector register file, it did not widen vectors beyond 128 bits, and it did not radically change the programming model. Instead, SSE3 added a small set of…
Scraping content from websites can be a useful tool for gathering information or automating certain tasks. In C#, there are several libraries available that can help make this process easier. In this blog post, we will cover how to use the HtmlAgilityPack library to scrape content from websites in C#.…
Scraping dynamic content from websites has become an important task in data collection and analysis. With the advancements in web technologies, websites are now using dynamic content that cannot be easily scraped with traditional web scraping techniques. In this blog post, we will explore how to scrape dynamic content from…
File I/O looks like one of those things that cannot be unit-tested properly. A method that reads directories, scans files, compares extensions, and deletes files seems tied to the real machine where the test is running. That creates all the usual problems: tests become slow, fragile, dependent on local paths,…
If you encounter the following error when pulling a repository in SourceTree: VirtualAlloc pointer is null, Win32 error 487 it is due to to the Cygwin system failing to allocate a 5 MB large chunk of memory for its heap at the fixed address 0x68570000, while only a hole 2.5…
Testing private methods is often debated among developers, as they typically represent implementation details and should not be directly tested. However, there are scenarios in legacy code where testing privately for safety before refactoring is necessary. The preferred approach is to test public behavior or extract complex logic into separate…
In the “2016 .NET Community Report” just released by Telerik, the answers to the question “What technology would you choose if building for Windows Desktop?” were as follows: So roughly half of new desktop developments would be based on Windows Forms, a technology declared dead multiple times. The Telerik report…
It is not easy to monitor how our code behaves on a vast array of different machines. A myriad of different configurations can lead to errors that are difficult to reproduce and even more difficult to anticipate. And when the customer calls complaining about a crash, provided information on what…