Why are 'out' parameters in .NET a bad idea?

Question

Why are \'out\' parameters in .NET a bad idea?

I was recently asked this, but I had no real answer besides it\'s simply unnecessarily complicating an application. Wh

Answer 1

Well, they aren't a bad idea I think. Dictionary has a TryGetValue method which is a very good example why out parameters are sometimes a very nice thing to have.

You should not overuse this feature of course, but it's not a bad idea per definition. Especially not in C# where you have to write down the out keyword in function declaration and call which makes it obvious what's going on.