Nonzero exit code means false (no bugs). If this program represents the entirety of your team's code, your story checks out.

it's true, non-zero exit code is supposed to mean boolean FALSE

but I am a part of my team, and so my code is my team's code, and hence the program is self-referential

I think?

my brain hurts

Amusing, but I feel like that's a terrible way to think about return codes. No error vs. error number does not map cleanly to a boolean.

Any other interpretation of his program goes against decades of Unix convention. http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_07_01.htm...

Ehhh, "if" is a bit of a specialized case. In general programs don't map fully to true/false, just leave it as "error code".

It's not that we should use any other interpretation, it's that that interpretation is only mostly true. Don't overgeneralize lest you introduce mistakes.