When is using the C# ref keyword ever a good idea?

Question

The more I see ref used in production code, the more misuse I encounter and the more pain it causes me. I have come to hate this keyword, because from a framework-building s

Answer 1

Hypothetically, I'd guess that you might use a lot of ref/out arguments if you intended to mimic the architecture of older procedural software, for example old game engines and so on. I've scanned the source code of one, I think it was Duke Nukem 3D, and it's procedural with lots of subroutines modifying variables in place, and almost no functions. Obviously, you'd be unlikely to program like this for a real production application unless you had some specific aim in mind.