title: Boolean logic with Rails ENV variables
body: <p>Since Rails ENV variables should only have string values it could be the problem to decide how to use ENV variable for use cases which need boolean logic. For example since ENV variable have a string value and it would always be truthy it wouldn't be too nice to do something like that:</p>
  
  <pre><code>if ENV['MY_VARIABLE']
    # do something
  else
    # do something else
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So there are at least 2 ways to accomplish things like above:</p>
  
  <p>Initialize variable with particular value and check it</p>
  
  <pre><code>if ENV['MY_VARIABLE'] == 'some string'
    # do something
  elsif ENV['MY_VARIABLE'] == 'some other string'
    # do something else
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Or just initialize variable with any value and check if it was initialized (the code could be exactly as we wanted).</p>
  
  <pre><code>if ENV['MY_VARIABLE']
    # do something
  else
    # do something else
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The question is what option is more preferred and what pros and cons each of them could have?</p>