I work at a company that uses feature flags heavily for releases. Even most refactors are done behind a flag.
It works surprisingly well, especially when you have 20 developers all trying to release different features at the same time, you then have a controlled way to isolate enabling and monitoring each new feature one at a time.
It's generally expected that you clean up your flag conditions after things have been tested. And that you write code so removing the flag flow is trivial.
I think the "thrill of turning text into action" might be an adult sentiment. I wouldn't write this off.
I decided I wanted to learn to "program" when I was 8, but I had no mentors, and no adults I knew could tell me how programs were made. I found QBasic lurking in the C drive, and got some books from the library, but without anyone to help my 8 year old brain couldn't get far alone. I got it to switch resolutions and draw some static pictures, but nothing else. I was frustrated.
Eventually I found and started playing with Games Factory, then Multimedia fusion from Clickteam, which is is sort of related to this, programming without typing. It was something my 10-year old self could understand on its own! I got a solid intuition of thinking in logic, and. Being able to set up some crazy causes and effects myself was really exciting. I made some "cool" stuff, for a 10 year old.
Once I found that limiting I tried to learn text-based programming again and by that time I was able to read code and puzzle out what it did from the concepts I learned. Maybe being a couple years older helped too.
I can't stand using tools like that as an adult, but without visual programming, I probably would've given up. Yet I paid my way through college writing Java/AS3/C, and now I made a living in games.
Also, again, it's expected that after it's tested you delete the old path. It's a short lived transitional situation.
Sometimes it's annoying. Overall it's safer when you're on a massive scale.