Disregarding for the moment the alternatives of doing what you're describing, when dealing with numerical constants in my code, I tend to use the number that makes the most sense in the situation, and adapt my tests around that. If I'm checking for 3 arguments, I want to try and use '3' as my constant (thus requiring me to use >= instead of >), not 2. For readability reasons, the use of a 2 seems less obvious to someone coming to the code later.