What's the costs of unused assembly references?
I was wondering what the various costs of referencing assemblies in a .NET solution are. I'm interested in both technical and organizational costs. Some examples: The unused Assembly contains additional bytes to ship (longer downloads, wasted space) The unused Assembly might contain an exploitable security hole The unused Assembly might incur additional startup costs The unused Assembly might incur additional review costs (like this question) The unused Assembly might confuse a new developer If you reference an assembly in a project but actually don't use any types in that assembly the unused