Comment by __MatrixMan__
4 hours ago
I've been handling it as a sort of voluntary A/B test.
A is what you're used to, B is what I recommend. If I can convince people to start using B instead, I can look at the metrics for A and conclude that it's effectively dead, and then I can remove it.
It's working out for me, but maybe not a fair comparison because I only have something like 15 users.
Yeah it's an interesting one - I have had the same thought process. If code is free, and I trust the tests and the review process, why not deploy a different branch to production for every user that wants one? it's only at the point where shared resources such as database schemas conflict that it becomes an issue, but a large slice of user requests don't even touch those. If something gets deployed broken in one branch, someone can flip branches and use the one that works. As long as the system maintains strongly enforced safety boundaries, a thousand roses can bloom outside of those boundaries.
It does beg the question where it all leads however ...