NO Feature Branches in GitHub?

Imagine the world in which feature branches don’t exist. Imagine the world where you don’t delay your code integration (code merges) until 11th hour and you deal with it on daily basis. Imagine the world of just main trunk development in GitHub and development mindset and development capabilities that allow your teammates to see your code sooner rather than later. Pay me now or pay me later is what one of my friends has been saying.

Yes, this goes against what everybody is doing out there, but it is worth exploring. It requires the right mindset and technical skills. It ultimately boils down to the following advice that I always give to fellow developers:

* Regardless of what branch you are in, when you check in or commit your code changes, pretend that these changes will go into production right away. Then ask yourself a question if my code will negatively impact customers and will it change the customer experience if product team wasn’t intending to do so yet. If the answer to above question is Yes, then you are not doing it the right way. Did you stub out your code or used feature toggle approach?

Thank you for reading this short article.

Almir Mustafic

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