Zero doesn't have to be a special case. In ruby 0 is a truthy value, as well as the empty string. The only things that are falsey are false and nil. Truthy/f

Zero doesn't have to be a special case. In ruby 0 is a truthy value, as well as the empty string. The only things that are falsey are false and nil. Truthy/falsey means when used in a conditional or after a unary !. So you still get strong typing, e.g. false == nil is not a true statement.