I’m building a Hex editor in C#/.NET that focuses on extreme performance and binary modification. Most modern editors either feel bloated with dependencies or are too old-school. I wanted something lightweight that can "swallow" massive binaries or DLLs instantly.
Technical highlights
Performance Built using Memory-Mapped Files (MMF) for instant handling of huge files.
Rendering Engine I’ve optimized the display engine to the point where it can render ASCII video at 60 FPS (I even built a video player inside it to stress-test the UI).
Custom DSL I’ve implemented a strict, reliable Domain Specific Language for patching. It’s designed to be robust—once you write a script, it works regardless of the environment.
Live Patching The editor watches the script file and reapplies changes on the fly. You can see bytes being rewritten in real-time as you edit your DSL code.
Why I’m doing this
I want to lower the barrier for learning reverse engineering. Instead of sharing cryptic instructions, users can just share a small script file that others can run to understand or patch an EXE/DLL. It's about knowledge sharing at the byte level.
I chose GPL v3 to ensure this stays an open community tool. I know C# is a controversial choice for low-level tools, but with modern .NET, I'm hitting millisecond speeds for compilation and patching.
I'm braced for your feedback on the architecture and the DSL approach. How can I make this even faster?
falkerdev•1h ago
I’m building a Hex editor in C#/.NET that focuses on extreme performance and binary modification. Most modern editors either feel bloated with dependencies or are too old-school. I wanted something lightweight that can "swallow" massive binaries or DLLs instantly.
Technical highlights Performance Built using Memory-Mapped Files (MMF) for instant handling of huge files. Rendering Engine I’ve optimized the display engine to the point where it can render ASCII video at 60 FPS (I even built a video player inside it to stress-test the UI). Custom DSL I’ve implemented a strict, reliable Domain Specific Language for patching. It’s designed to be robust—once you write a script, it works regardless of the environment. Live Patching The editor watches the script file and reapplies changes on the fly. You can see bytes being rewritten in real-time as you edit your DSL code.
Why I’m doing this I want to lower the barrier for learning reverse engineering. Instead of sharing cryptic instructions, users can just share a small script file that others can run to understand or patch an EXE/DLL. It's about knowledge sharing at the byte level. I chose GPL v3 to ensure this stays an open community tool. I know C# is a controversial choice for low-level tools, but with modern .NET, I'm hitting millisecond speeds for compilation and patching. I'm braced for your feedback on the architecture and the DSL approach. How can I make this even faster?