Depending on the flavour of the linguist, they could say "as long as the correct meaning is conveyed, go wild" :)

I think amount of is usually used for 'continuous' (I'm not sure on the word) substances like flour, water, or salt, rather than multiples of discreet objects.

I'm guessing that "amount" is not quantized ("number" is). Let me be absolutely clear that most native speakers will not notice the distinction (even pedants like me missed this one).

You'll also see people being pedantic about "less" versus "fewer," e.g. complaining about the "12 items or less" line being improper usage since items are quantized and therefore it should be "12 items or fewer."

Sorry, sibling responses still aren’t quite answering this correctly.

Number is for countable distinct things, and amount is for a quantity of a single thing. (Often a substance)

So a number of sticks, a number of socks, a number of people. A number of eggs.

An amount of flour, sugar, water, money, time.

A number of minutes equals an amount of time.

It's probably mostly idiomatic. For native English-speakers it is more natural to use "number" when talking about things that are counted units that would be represented by integers (like marbles, or children, or features). "Amount" would be more appropriate when talking about something that you measure and represent with a floating point number (like butter, or gasoline/petrol, or risk). But an English-speaker will understand what you mean if you say "amount of features" instead of "number of features."

And since we're being picky, it should be "the latter is correct", not "the later is correct."

"Number" is correct when referring to countable items (like "features"), while "amount" is correct for non-countable things (like "water" or "time").