breakerbox

I am approaching a point where I need to test out features safely. I want to know what tools/methodologies exists for rolling out new features and interfaces.

Do you just randomly push 50% of traffic to new features, or is there some sort of routing gradient function that pushes more and more users to a new feature as confidence grows in it?

I was thinking it would be nice to have an experimental web server behind a load balancer, and to slowly push more and more traffic to the server with the new feature before letting all users see it.

As a potential parent in the next 5+ years, and also as a software engineer and eventual founder/business owner, what is your advice for having children?

It would be helpful to hear from other tech people that have good and bad stories about children affecting their career/company.

I am working on an MVP, which initially ran on Heroku to simplify things. However, I'm realizing I need to move to a provider that gives me control of the the server (likely AWS Lightsail since I'm already familiar).

What is the best practice for deploying applications to a VPS? I have found resources for git hooks, but those seem to focus on static websites. I would love to be able to run "git push prod master" and use git/scripts to automate building and deployment.

Do you have any good resources or recommendations for doing this?