Projects

Notes from building production tools: the trade-offs, constraints, and questions each project exposed.

4 published parts

Reading order

Part 1 of 4

Why I Built ZaString

ZaString started with a frustration. I was working on a high-throughput system in C#, and every profiler run showed the same thing: strings everywhere. Allocations piling up. The garbage collector working overtime. Not because the code was wrong, but because strings in C# are immutable and every operation creates a new one.

Projects 5 min

Part 2 of 4

5 Jun №20

How to Merge PGN Files in F#: Streaming, Performance, and Discriminated Unions

I needed to merge hundreds of Lichess PGN files into a single database for opening preparation. The existing tools either required Python dependencies, discarded game metadata, or merged games into variation trees rather than concatenating them cleanly. I wanted a standalone CLI that takes a folder of .pgn files and produces one merge.pgn — fast, memory-efficient, and correct.

Projects 3 min

Part 3 of 4

7 Jul №28

Building a Native x64-to-C# Transpiler: Why I Built Alicorn

Alicorn started with a question I couldn’t stop asking: what if you could take raw x64 machine code and turn it into readable, editable C#?

Projects 3 min

Part 4 of 4

10 Jul №30

Beyond Unicorn: Why I Code-Gen Instead of Emulating

When a binary does something interesting, you usually have three options: reverse it manually, call it as a black box through P/Invoke, or emulate it instruction-by-instruction with something like Unicorn Engine.

Projects 6 min