>face value

Funny term to use as it has a very particular meaning of something that cannot/should not be interpreted because it is well defined.

This is a common flaw of the programmer type, especially when they go about writing code and documentation. That is, that what they are writing can only be interpreted in one way.

Then they toss it out into the real world and it turns out every human has a different interpretation, the runtime operates differently based on the phase of the moon, and even the compiler seems to be making its own best guess based on undefined behavior.

The value of int is typically well defined, but once you start stacking up these well defined bits, subjectivity quickly takes over.