It's OK to hardcode feature flags (2025)

The article argues that hardcoded feature flags—simple conditionals stored in JSON files—are sufficient for most teams and products, despite heavy marketing of complex feature flag management software. While specialized systems offer runtime flexibility, they introduce unnecessary infrastructure, security risks, technical debt, and non-deterministic behavior that hardcoded flags avoid. The author recommends starting with simple hardcoded flags and only adopting sophisticated solutions when a team genuinely needs to change features at runtime at scale.