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Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#21

Post by xwowsersx »

How do Launch HNs work exactly? Is any group that was part of any YC batch allowed to do a Launch HN and continue to do so each time they pivot? I don't have an issue with this, I'm just trying to understand why a startup that was in the Winter 2014 batch is doing a Launch HN nearly nine years later. Presumably they pivoted several times, perhaps from something not even remotely related to feature flags?

I know some of the details of how to submit a Launch HN are described here https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html but doesn't quite answer my questions. Just curious!

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#22

Post by esafak »

danpalmer wrote: post #4

Something I love about the experiment tooling I've used at a few places now (Thread, Google) is the fact that state has typically been stored in source control. i.e. not just the usage of flags in code, but the rollout/experiment definitions, the state of how much traffic is allocated to each branch, eligibility requirements, etc. This makes it easy to see what the current state is (without going to a UI), and also m…

How did you represent the features flags in source control?

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#23

Post by aleksiy123 »

jonathannorris wrote: post #17
danpalmer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed reply, although I feel like I may have miscommunicated the aim here. I'm not really thinking about what is being launched, but how, and where the truth lives. A CLI is certainly a nice feature, but brings decisions that need to be made: who runs it, where do they run it, when, how do you know what was run, how do you deploy the CLI, and so on. The same can be said for, say, running your test s…

You can use a git-based workflow for feature flags, that's likely how most teams will start using flags in their code with environment variables and infrastructure state. However, most deployment pipelines in the wild are very slow and owned by engineering, limiting the value of doing git-based state for your Feature Flags. I've seen that disconnecting the deployment of code from releasing of features can be transfor…

I put this in another comment, but disconnecting of code and feature release can still be achieved while storing feature flags as code. You need to build out a seperate pipeline and release process. With this you can still achieve all the advantages that you listed out.

I think the key difference is if you consider feature flags to be configuration and believe in configuration as code as a best practice.

I think this is the right approach in the long term. People having the ability to modify configuration in production in real time is an outage waiting to happen without having an obvious way to rollback to previously known working state.

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#24

Post by jxf »

xwowsersx wrote: post #21

How do Launch HNs work exactly? Is any group that was part of any YC batch allowed to do a Launch HN and continue to do so each time they pivot? I don't have an issue with this, I'm just trying to understand why a startup that was in the Winter 2014 batch is doing a Launch HN nearly nine years later. Presumably they pivoted several times, perhaps from something not even remotely related to feature flags? I know some…

If I understand correctly, DevCycle is new, but Taplytics (from that YC batch) is the parent. DevCycle doesn't seem to be a decade old.

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#25

Post by esafak »

jonathannorris wrote: post #17
danpalmer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed reply, although I feel like I may have miscommunicated the aim here. I'm not really thinking about what is being launched, but how, and where the truth lives. A CLI is certainly a nice feature, but brings decisions that need to be made: who runs it, where do they run it, when, how do you know what was run, how do you deploy the CLI, and so on. The same can be said for, say, running your test s…

You can use a git-based workflow for feature flags, that's likely how most teams will start using flags in their code with environment variables and infrastructure state. However, most deployment pipelines in the wild are very slow and owned by engineering, limiting the value of doing git-based state for your Feature Flags. I've seen that disconnecting the deployment of code from releasing of features can be transfor…

I don't think using source control is incompatible with this. You can persist state in source control, and have a separate deployment pipeline that is triggered only for updates to feature flag files. It is also deployed separately; e.g., to a key-value store.

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#26

Post by esafak »

ushakov wrote: post #2

I like the domain name. But isn't feature flag management market too crowded by now? Why should DevCycle be allowed to exist?

Why should I pick you, when there are so many alternatives? I have more candidates than I can try: DevCycle, enrolla, FeatureHub, Featurevisor, Flagsmith, Flipt, Flux, GrowthBook, LaunchDarkly, Prefab, Split, Unleash

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#27

Post by dang »

xwowsersx wrote: post #21

How do Launch HNs work exactly? Is any group that was part of any YC batch allowed to do a Launch HN and continue to do so each time they pivot? I don't have an issue with this, I'm just trying to understand why a startup that was in the Winter 2014 batch is doing a Launch HN nearly nine years later. Presumably they pivoted several times, perhaps from something not even remotely related to feature flags? I know some…

They hadn't done one before and each startup gets one. They aren't even the oldest - I think RescueTime (YC W08) has the record: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28683597

We're thinking of relaxing the rules so that a startup that's working on something fundamentally different can do a later Launch HN (perhaps after a year or two have gone by), but that's still undecided.

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#28

Post by cdrux »

esafak wrote: post #26
ushakov wrote: post #2

I like the domain name. But isn't feature flag management market too crowded by now? Why should DevCycle be allowed to exist?

Why should I pick you, when there are so many alternatives? I have more candidates than I can try: DevCycle, enrolla, FeatureHub, Featurevisor, Flagsmith, Flipt, Flux, GrowthBook, LaunchDarkly, Prefab, Split, Unleash

100% there are some great options on the market right now and I can't imagine anyone trying all of them.

The reality is that most of the products on that list are tackling the problem in a different way, targeting their own specific niche.

I would only recommend looking at the products that resonate with your needs.

With us for example, if our focus on Developer Experience and fitting into your coding workflow resonates, that's great, you should try us out in comparison to the others that position that way.

But if that doesn't resonate and say Growthbook's focus on analytics and data warehouse connections is more important to you, you should look at them and others like them instead.

We're definitely not trying to be all things for all potential users of feature flags, but we're hoping that what we're offering matters to small teams of developers that care about embedding feature flagging into their development process

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#29

Post by cdrux »

jxf wrote: post #24
xwowsersx wrote: post #21

How do Launch HNs work exactly? Is any group that was part of any YC batch allowed to do a Launch HN and continue to do so each time they pivot? I don't have an issue with this, I'm just trying to understand why a startup that was in the Winter 2014 batch is doing a Launch HN nearly nine years later. Presumably they pivoted several times, perhaps from something not even remotely related to feature flags? I know some…

If I understand correctly, DevCycle is new, but Taplytics (from that YC batch) is the parent. DevCycle doesn't seem to be a decade old.

That is correct!

DevCycle is quite new, we just started working on it in 2022.

Re: Launch HN: DevCycle (YC W14) – a feature flag platform built for developers

#30

Post by xwowsersx »

dang wrote: post #27
xwowsersx wrote: post #21

How do Launch HNs work exactly? Is any group that was part of any YC batch allowed to do a Launch HN and continue to do so each time they pivot? I don't have an issue with this, I'm just trying to understand why a startup that was in the Winter 2014 batch is doing a Launch HN nearly nine years later. Presumably they pivoted several times, perhaps from something not even remotely related to feature flags? I know some…

They hadn't done one before and each startup gets one. They aren't even the oldest - I think RescueTime (YC W08) has the record: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28683597 We're thinking of relaxing the rules so that a startup that's working on something fundamentally different can do a later Launch HN (perhaps after a year or two have gone by), but that's still undecided.

Thanks for the clarification dang
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