I wrote a question on how parameter passing works for our candidate exam (any applicant lucky enough to read my blog will now get a free answer, I guess!) on ASP.NET / C# etc.   Since my coworkers and I have been discussing this topic over the last few days I thought I'd post about it (why else?). 

Wonder-twin powers activate! Form of: Sarcastic Bastard

Essentially I fell in with the dangerous microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp elitist crowd and so became a 'pedantic parameter bigot'.  We like to roam cyber, Cartesian and other high and low-dimensional spaces vilifying those 'parameter dilettantes' who dare say that reference type variables are passed by reference.  Indeed!

But in reality many people I greatly respect in real and cyber spaces use the terms that way and I can only conclude that it is my inflexibility and not any failing of theirs that causes this problem of communication.  Certainly I would want people to tolerate the somewhat vague things I often prattle on about and not call me on every slightly ambiguous thing I say.  I can only ask this: read the links below and come to your own conclusions about how you want to phrase it:

Jon Skeet's Parameter passing in C#

Microsoft's 'Passing Parameters' C# Reference