If you read http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Framework-Design-Guidelines/Krzysztof-Cwalina/e/9780321545619, it tells you that in the .Net Framework, they used out and ref parameters in some cases, but now think it was a mistake. So, if they were to start over today, TryParse would probably work differently.

>I agree with you up to here, but why does TryParse need to return success of failure? I rather have it returning null if it fails and then no need of an output parameter (or an object with 2 properties), I just need to remember that my variable should be nullable.