> You can use `$state->getData('TestVar', false);` to get the data you need in this case.

That still doesn't solve the problem because `$stage->TestVar` (however it's actually stored) won't ever take the value of false. This means you couldn't access data that sometimes you want to default to true and sometimes to false.

> The disadvantage of the approach you are attempting is that if you want to not use the getData function and access the variable as a property

It's not just that. I can't have logic that sets a default on some condition; I *must* always access it as if the default value is false. One can't set it to be false and then do `$state->getData('Var', true)'` because it'll always be true in that case even if it had been set to false previously.

This is better documented by the tests in my PR #2813