Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Wanting to return more than one thing from a method is a pretty common scenario. For example, a response and how long it took to retrieve it.

Like anything, there’s more than one way to go about this. You could use an out (or ref) parameter:

public void DoIt()
{
    TimeSpan duration;
    var response = GetResponse(out duration);
    // do something with response & duration
}

private string GetResponse(out TimeSpan duration)
{
    var stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    var response = ...;
    stopwatch.Stop();
    duration = stopwatch.Elapsed;
    return response;
}

Or return a (private nested) class, or struct:

public void DoIt()
{
    var result = GetResponse();
    // do something with result.Response & result.Duration
}

private Result GetResponse()
{
    var stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    var response = ...;
    stopwatch.Stop();
    return new Result 
    {
        Response = response,
        Duration = stopwatch.Elapsed
    };
}

private class Result
{
    public string Response { get; set; }
    public TimeSpan Duration { get; set; }
}

But .NET 4.0 gives us one more option, an anonymous type:

public void DoIt()
{
    var result = GetResponse();
    // do something with result.Response & result.Duration
}

private dynamic GetResponse()
{
    var stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    var response = ...;
    stopwatch.Stop();
    return new
    {
        Response = response,
        Duration = stopwatch.Elapsed
    };
}

Same effect, less code!