state = state & ~BIT7;
state = state.without(BIT7);Plus there are performance concerns. I remember one graduate introducing a c++ bit field class and tried to replace some core functionality with it and killed performance. Developers prefer to debug non optimized builds, and non optimized builds can end up running slow when you replace simple one liners with classes and inline methods that don't get optimized in debug builds.
[1]I hope this doesn't sound aggressive as it really isn't intended to. It is just everyone is so used to seeing bitwise operations it is as straight forwards as reading "set the third bit" or "toggle the last bit" when we see the C code.
num = num.plus(x);
might be less likely to mistype than
num = num + x;
but nobody would ever do that. Once you've done bitwise operators a few times they become just as comfortable and natural as addition or subtraction.
In the c/c++ game code bases I have worked on, it is very common to have statuses stored as a uint with each bit representing something and very common to set, unset, toggle, reverse bits etc.
I actually read the first part of the article thinking these aren't hacks these are just things people use day in day out. But the later section about setting last 0 or 1 bit etc suddenly because things I wouldn't typically see in the wild.