Avoiding Loose Typing Dangers

Sometimes I like terse code. if( state ){} is clear. However this syntax can cause a lot of grief in loose typed languages, and while you can avoid some cases by typing vars, you can still get yourself into trouble (as a note: I find strict mode a pain in ActionScript). if( GetState() ){} may mess you up if the function returns a string, where if( GetState() == false ){} will do the type conversion for you and function properly.