I really hate to resurrect this issue but after some recent conversations I think it’s necessary.  We have a lot of code – particularly in the deep, dark recesses of our application that no one dares touch – that uses GetHashCode() to retrieve the underlying value of an enumeration item.

I’ve been slowly working to eliminate this technique from the system but it works, has been in use for eight or so years, and old habits die hard.  An unfortunate side effect though, is that less experienced developers see this pattern repeated throughout the code, internalize the practice, and propagate it.  If GetHashCode() works why should we care?

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