Is using reflection a design smell? [closed]

Question

I see a lot of C#, .net questions solved here using reflection. To me, a lot of them look like bending the rules at the cost of good design (OOP). Many of the solutions look unmaintenable and "scripty".

Is using reflection a good practice in general? Are there things that can only be solved by reflection?

edit:

Please give examples where reflection is the only good solution.

Answer 1

Examples:

• Dynamic loading of types via configuration
• Using "convention" style registration (register components with your container that implement an interface or have a certain naming convention)
• Checking for/using custom attributes/type metadata

Reflection is a tool, like "throw". should you use throw everywhere? No! So is it a code smell to use throw?