Do people miss the word "ergonomically" in my original comment? Because yeah, the semantics is essentially the same, just as it would be the same for e.g.

    double.TryParse("5.x5", out double val, out bool ok);
    if (ok) { ... }

in case of a hypothetical variant of C# that doesn't have functions, only procedures, so you'd have to return the data from subroutine calls by ref/out/globals exclusively. It's still would be the same semantics — but quite different ergonomics.

So out of those three choices: return all results by assigning to ref/out parameters; return one result directly, all other by assigning to ref/out parameters; return all results directly — I personally prefer the last one. Almost nobody prefers the first one, yet people seem to be strangely attached to the second variant for some reason.