5 ms·

To me using feature flags for what are effectively branches just feels wrong.

SethMurphy 9y ago
Wile I disagree with skipping the code reviews, one main advantage of the feature flag part of the strategy is you don't have to constantly rebase and your code goes through a production ready code review. Feature flags may not feel right, but they minimize risk spectacularly, which is the ultimate goal that any solution should put first. The use of the word "feature" is misleading to me and makes it sound like they should be used for new features only and not changes or rewrites of brittle code.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  Plus the whole feature flag "solutions" and "tooling" people complain about is wrong. Once that you are forced to put your (small) changes to production all the time, you will start thinking about backwards compatibility in a whole new way. It's not about feature flags, it's about shipping constantly and knowing after each step if you've made a mistake or not. To me personally, this method is a huge pill against headaches.
dangoor 9y ago
Here are a couple of ways in which feature flags can be better than branches: QA can try in-development features out together easily. Some flags can be used operationally to turn off non-essential features during periods of high load (for a service, that is). There's no free lunch, but flags can be a useful tool. https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
- joshribakoff 9y ago
  The fun starts when you have a multi tenant system, and you end up with some users having the flags enabled and some not having them enabled. You may find that you have to support both "branches" in the long run. Which can be a good thing in the sense your product is more configurable, but also entails a lot of the same grievances of branching because you end up supporting multiple variations of a feature. Or multiple combinations thereof
  - dangoor 9y ago
    Yeah, totally agree about the danger there. Flags should have a defined lifetime. I've been in that multi tenant hell, and concur that it sucks.
    - sroussey 9y ago
      Agreed. They need a defined lifetime and a defined migration (as needed, for either the feature or control).

Wile I disagree with skipping the code reviews, one main advantage of the feature flag part of the strategy is you don't have to constantly rebase and your code goes through a production ready code review. Feature flags may not feel right, but they minimize risk spectacularly, which is the ultimate goal that any solution should put first. The use of the word "feature" is misleading to me and makes it sound like they should be used for new features only and not changes or rewrites of brittle code.

dullgiulio 9y ago
Plus the whole feature flag "solutions" and "tooling" people complain about is wrong. Once that you are forced to put your (small) changes to production all the time, you will start thinking about backwards compatibility in a whole new way. It's not about feature flags, it's about shipping constantly and knowing after each step if you've made a mistake or not. To me personally, this method is a huge pill against headaches.

dangoor 9y ago

Here are a couple of ways in which feature flags can be better than branches: QA can try in-development features out together easily. Some flags can be used operationally to turn off non-essential features during periods of high load (for a service, that is). There's no free lunch, but flags can be a useful tool. https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html

joshribakoff 9y ago
The fun starts when you have a multi tenant system, and you end up with some users having the flags enabled and some not having them enabled. You may find that you have to support both "branches" in the long run. Which can be a good thing in the sense your product is more configurable, but also entails a lot of the same grievances of branching because you end up supporting multiple variations of a feature. Or multiple combinations thereof
- dangoor 9y ago
  Yeah, totally agree about the danger there. Flags should have a defined lifetime. I've been in that multi tenant hell, and concur that it sucks.
  - sroussey 9y ago
    Agreed. They need a defined lifetime and a defined migration (as needed, for either the feature or control).