Excessive branching has long been a problem in the use of source code management systems. First, because branches were difficult and expensive (in effort) in Subversion and then because they had a tendency to proliferate in Git once they were made almost effortless.

There are a few situations where branches make sense, but generally they cause mini-silos that obscure more than they help. I stumbled upon this talk from Thierry de Pauw and I liked it so much, I had to share it here. Despite the click-bait title, he sticks to a comprehensive explanation of why trunk-based development makes sense and how it avoids the mini-silo problem of feature branching.

During the talk he refers to a great blog article by James Shore called Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day. This is well worth your time to read. After all, who doesn't want an excuse to take a rubber chicken into the office?