TIL there's an industry around feature flags. I can see how it can be useful, but imo if you're doing the modern approach with k8s, gitops, etc. deployments are too easy to bother with this.
Often it's not about only turning something on/off (a simple bool). But doing a slow ramp up, only enable for certain cohorts to test etc. Things still doable in code, of course, but it's nice with a dashboard to control it.
You quickly end up with a NIH thing. You make a boolean toggle in the db. Then make an internal dashboard. Then some more advanced toggles. And suddenly you've spent a few weeks of coding time to essentially save yourself from spinning up an Unleash container.
Even if deployments took 2 seconds you’ll still find a frontend engineer who wants to “iterate faster” and an ear attached to the purse strings who will listen.
