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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

What's the point of

    GetCoordinates(out var x, out var y)

over destructuring assignment like

    var x, var y = GetCoordinates();

the former looks completely backwards.

Wondered about this myself, is this something that is needed for backwards compatibility or something?

IMO fishing parameters back from functions is one of the things I do not miss from old C.

Anyone has anything to add to masklinn's explanation?

Edit:

Maybe the former method would make more sense to use if it were HasCoordinates and returned a Boolean?

This way you would get a Boolean if the coordinates exist and would not have to perform validation on the out variables.

The former works with pre-tuple out-parameter-based API e.g. Int32.TryParse.

I much prefer your second example. In fact, surely tuples would help in this situation?

eg. in C++: tuple<int,int> x = GetCoordinates(); or auto x = GetCoordinates()

Much easier to see the output. I maintain enough old old C++ code and don't like seeing GetCoordinates(int x, int y) or x in COM-land any more.