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Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

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Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#11

Post by ricardobeat »

shiandow wrote: post #6

This product is probably not intended for me but at this stage I'm not even sure I know what a feature flag is any more. I thought feature flags were just toggles so you could turn features on and off. I wouldn't know how to implement those as anything other than code. Or why you would need an external service. What problem is this solving?

Writing your own logic to handle flags is trivial at first, especially if you're running a monolithic app, but quickly grows in complexity:

- distributing flags to multiple services

- broadcasting updates

- caching rules

- audit logs

- product, not eng, will start managing the flags at some point and needs easy access

- custom logic for gradual rollouts, A/B testing

- custom attributes support (used in evaluation)

- managing multi-variant flags

- supporting multiple platforms (backend, frontend, native apps, services, jobs) and evaluation strategies (eager server-side evaluation vs shipping a client-side engine)

There are quite a few open-source options like Growthbook, Flagsmith, go-feature-flag, and Unleash that you can check out for comparison.

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#15

Post by tushr »

baduiux wrote: post #13

Cool product and great landing page. This is quite off topic: how did you make the code animation in the Feature Flag as Code section? I reminded me of prezi.com (with their slide animations). Would love to know!

Hey, Thanks! I recorded it using https://screen.studio/.

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#16

Post by tushr »

hermanschaaf wrote: post #12

Love the simple landing page! How big is the free tier? The pricing slider seems to show that you pay $39 for anything more than 0 requests.

Aah! That's a miss from my end. I had it on my previous landing page. It is 100k requests a month. But, I am not adding any cap right now. I monitor the system all the time so if it goes above the free tier limit significantly I will notify.

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#17

Post by tushr »

ricardobayes wrote: post #14

Why does this need to be a dependency? In my view feature flags are core enough not to be outsourced to a third party. Although, there are companies using libraries for "isEven" so there might be a market for it.

That's a fair point! Basic feature flags are just toggles, true and false. But they quickly become complex as you onboard new customers and scale. You need percentage rollouts to make sure things are working before everyone starts using the features. It only makes sense for engineers to spend time building actual features and testing them in production rather than spending bandwidth on building a feature flag management tool or managing the service for the same. This is a typical build vs buy debate. :D

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#18

Post by jofzar »

SSchick wrote: post #8
shiandow wrote: post #6

This product is probably not intended for me but at this stage I'm not even sure I know what a feature flag is any more. I thought feature flags were just toggles so you could turn features on and off. I wouldn't know how to implement those as anything other than code. Or why you would need an external service. What problem is this solving?

A lot of "engineers" nowadays don't know the concept of per-user/customers configs and how to build/expose them to non-technical staff. The main appeal of feature flags is simplicity and being a low-hanging way to apply per-customer/user configuration, few platforms allow true a/b testing (amplitude comes to mind but I'm sure there are more).

Statsig and launchdarkly are the one that come to mind for me.

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#19

Post by tantalor »

ricardobeat wrote: post #11
shiandow wrote: post #6

This product is probably not intended for me but at this stage I'm not even sure I know what a feature flag is any more. I thought feature flags were just toggles so you could turn features on and off. I wouldn't know how to implement those as anything other than code. Or why you would need an external service. What problem is this solving?

Writing your own logic to handle flags is trivial at first, especially if you're running a monolithic app, but quickly grows in complexity: - distributing flags to multiple services - broadcasting updates - caching rules - audit logs - product, not eng, will start managing the flags at some point and needs easy access - custom logic for gradual rollouts, A/B testing - custom attributes support (used in evaluation) -…

> product, not eng, will start managing the flags at some point and needs easy access

How to tell you have a broken engineering culture.

Re: Show HN: FFlags – Feature flags as code, served from the edge

#20

Post by Sayrus »

tantalor wrote: post #19
ricardobeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing your own logic to handle flags is trivial at first, especially if you're running a monolithic app, but quickly grows in complexity: - distributing flags to multiple services - broadcasting updates - caching rules - audit logs - product, not eng, will start managing the flags at some point and needs easy access - custom logic for gradual rollouts, A/B testing - custom attributes support (used in evaluation) -…

> product, not eng, will start managing the flags at some point and needs easy access How to tell you have a broken engineering culture.

Some flags are meant to be enabled for specific customers, on-demand, depending on what type of contract is signed, under NDA and so on. Over time, many department that aren't "engineering" need to be able to change some flags. That doesn't imply your culture is broken.
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