Dear past me, use the flags (ishan.page)

submitted 1 year ago by ishanpage@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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[-] LastoftheDinosaurs@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks, that was a good read. Can you explain what you meant by "feature flag / version system"? Is that like different branches in git?

[-] deltamaniac@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Feature Flags is a concept that helps to enable or disable a feature on an app. Example you would want to roll out a new button on app for a certain set of users, A naive and simplified implementation would look like something below

flags = server.getFlags() // Fetch/Compute feature flags

if (flags.FeatureA == true) {
// show button
}

[-] Deely@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

Hm, I still not sure about this article lesson.

So, main issue is that users of old version can use new feature, but they should not? On a desktop app? But why they sould not be able to do it in the first place?

I mean idea is good, but situation described in article looks like completely fictitious or incomplete..

[-] ishanpage@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

The scenario is not ficticious. It's taken straight from my first job, but I had to leave out specific details. The application being developed had something to do with DRM, so that might explain the weird requirements.

The lesson is that sometimes business will require you to force users to update their version, and/or enable specific features for specific subsets of users. So you should have such a mechanism in place before it is required, otherwise you will end up doing hacky things like breaking the server to do what needs to be done.

Systems such as these are actually fairly common in enterprise, but since it was my first job, I had not planned ahead for this because I had no idea.

[-] Deely@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, thanks for explanation, if you implemented DRM/security then it all make sense.

this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023

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