A good rule to follow is to never use numbers other than 1 and 0 in your code. If you require another numeric constant you should make it a const variable; this way it gets a nice meaningful name. The number 40 has little meaning, however, the identifier HOURS_WORKED_PER_WEEK tells us something about what a function is doing. Another benefit is that you can change the value of a const variable in one place rather than having to change all occurrences of 40. Using the latter method it is easy to make a mistake by changing an unrelated occurrence of 40 or forgetting to change an occurrence.