When programming, we often describe state of objects in terms of boolean properties, on/off switches. Using a true/false value is an easy solution, the one at hand, but it might cause problems when our applications evolve. Next time you are about to use a boolean value to describe state, consider creating a two-cased enumeration for that purpose. Especially, if your programming language has decent support for enums. (In Swift, for example, enums are a pleasure to work with. In Python, not so much.)

I’m writing this post because, admittedly, I don’t use enumerations often enough. They just aren’t as easy to use as booleans. They have friction: you have to define enums before you can use them. You have to stop for a minute, think about what and how you want to describe, where to put the enum definition, etc. It’s an entry fee you have to pay, but it buys you a tool that I think is both more powerful and simpler than booleans in a few important ways:

Enumerations are explicit and descriptive. When using enums you have to name all the possible options instead of just the “true” case (e.g. “move.dynamic = gentle/rapid” vs “move.isRapid = true/false”). It makes it easier to understand the meaning of the value without extra information. One doesn’t have to wonder what “not true” means. Being explicit protects you against miscommunication in the team and your own bad memory. It is also helpful in situations when what the value stands for depends on the context of your application — because your application will change with time.

Enumerations make growth easier. I recommend starting with enums rather than booleans because the effort of adding a third case to an enum is an order of magnitude smaller than the effort of switching from a boolean value to something that supports three-valued logic. Of course, this “something” is an enumeration because adding a second boolean to support three-valued logic is trap: you end up with four possible combinations, one of which is invalid, but the language doesn’t know about it so it can’t protect you against reaching the invalid state. It’s less work to start with an enum than to refactor a boolean into an enum later on because you might be forced to make changes in many places if the boolean value you want to refactor have propagated through the system, been passed to functions, gotten stored as properties of different objects, etc. The boolean refactoring cost gets even higher if you serialized those values, stored them in a database, or if you have to support clients using the old data format. In all those situations extending an already existing enum with an additional case is trivial.

Enumerations are safer. You can accidentally use an incorrect boolean value — one from a different property or a different object. Type systems in some languages, for example in Swift, won’t let you make such mistakes if those properties use different enum types. For example, typing “game.state = move.dynamic” doesn’t make sense and will result in a compilation error. Typing “game.isPaused = move.isRapid” is equally nonsensical but the compiler won’t complain about it because types match. There are more benefits still: in Swift the compiler will raise errors if you add a new case to an enum but forget to handle it in a switch statement somewhere in your code, which allows you to make such changes with confidence. Even in dynamic languages making changes is safer when using enumerations because it’s easier to grep (or ag) for enum cases than it is to track down all the uses of a specific boolean property.

As you can see, enumerations are a useful tool to have in your tool box. Use them to your advantage.