Getting rid of bugs is now at higher priority than adding new functionalities.
On the other hand I think that most of us have his/her own techniques when dealing with data. If everyone's wishes were fulfilled, you'll get your bitwise operations, but also 10 other techniques for handling values (flags system/stacks/queues/lists/dictionaries/pointers/some weird data management templates used by 1 person on the world/other stuff), what would make Construct messy. Simplicity is key for success here.