Why does Ruby have TrueClass and FalseClass instead of a single Boolean class?

Question

I was working on serializing values when found out about this one. Ruby has a TrueClass class, and a FalseClass class, but it has no Boolean class. I\'d like to

Answer 1

true and false could be managed by a Boolean class that held multiple values, but then the class object would have to have internal values, and therefore have to be de-referenced with every use.

Instead, Ruby treats true and false as long values (0 and 1), each of which corresponds to a type of object class (FalseClass and TrueClass). By using two classes instead of a single Boolean class, each class does not require any values and therefore can be distinguished simply by its class identifier (0 or 1). I believe this translates to significant speed advantages internal to the Ruby engine, because internally Ruby can treat TrueClass and FalseClass as long values that require zero translation from their ID value, whereas a Boolean object would have to be de-referenced before it could be evaluated.