Some people do work in a language bubble, probably even most developers by weight are producing exclusively one of Java, C#, and JavaScript, but let's leave th

Some people do work in a language bubble, probably even most developers by weight are producing exclusively one of Java, C#, and JavaScript, but let's leave that aside. What's the absolute minimum level of mental imposition on an if statement? I'd say it's "this must take a boolean", but that implies compile-time types, and I'm not here to litigate the mere existence of dynamic languages today. I would argue that the rule I sketched above is both the clearest and simplest rule which is compatible with a dynamic language. It imposes the least amount of mental burden in understanding or writing code.