The term "Magic Numbers" generally refers to numeric constants embedded in code that serve an essential but often difficult to determine purpose. Avoiding code like "if (table.columns(8).row(12) = 772) ..." is generally regarded as a best practice. But I'm not sure Matt's colleague, however, grasped that concept too well ... 

use constant ONE => 1;

Found in a perl header file, Matt was curious and explored to see where it was used...

my $db_status = $q->param( $constants->STATUS ); 
# if approved, set to finalized, otherwise kick back 
my $current_state = $state{'Needs Modification'}; 
if ( $db_status == ONE ) 
{ 
    $current_state = $state{'Finalized'}; 
}

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