[vijayer]

The call out on premature optimization is valid. However this article misses the mark on a couple fronts.

One, as others have called out, is the ability to control rollout (and rollback) without needing a deployment. Think mobile apps and the rollout friction. If something goes wrong, you need a way to turn off the offending functionality quickly without having to go through another deployment or a mobile app review.

Second, is to be able to understand the impact of the rollout. Feature flags can easily measure how the rollout of one feature can affect the rest of the system - whether it is usage, crash rates, engagement, or further down the funnel, revenue. It’s a cheat code for quickly turning every rollout into an experiment. And you don’t need a large sample size for catching some of these.

By having this power, you will find yourself doing more of it, which I believe is good.