Programming

Yeah of course we convert, but it effectively means you need this little custom conversion layer between every application and its database. It's a pain.

I imagine this would still lead to a never ending stream of subtle logic errors.

from bossland import billysbool, billysand
from geography import latlong
import telephony

def send_missile_alert(missiles_incoming: billysbool, is_drill: billysbool, target: latlong):
  if billysand(missiles_incoming, not is_drill):
    for phone in telephony.get_all_residents(target):
      phone.send_alert("Missiles are inbound to your location")

Can you spot the bug?

Oh you have no idea. There is no teaching this guy.

I have seen this, but with "Y", "N" instead. That was the way the database stored it and the way the UI displayed it, but everything inbetween converted to boolean instead, because there was logic depending on those choices. It wasn't that bad, all things considered, just a weird quirk in the system. I think there was another system that did just use those strings plain (like WHERE foo = 'Y' in stored procedures), but nothing I had to work with. We just mapped "Y" to true when reading the query results and were done with it.

(And before anyone asks, yes, we considered any other value false. If anyone complained that their "Yes", "y" or empty was seen as false, we told them they used it wrong. They always accepted that, though they didn't necessarily learn from it.)

It would probably carry less risk, but in terms of bytes used this would be even worse. And we have other problems there that I'd tell you about but it would make me too sad.

Well that would be ok, because any standard tool for interfacing with the database would transparently treat bit in the DB as bool in the code. I think many DBs call it a bit rather than a bool.