2024.11.14

đź“° News & Discussions

localfirst.fm #17 – Kyle Simpson: Local-first identity

"The guest of this episode is Kyle Simpson, a prolific JavaScript engineer and author of the book You Don’t Know JS. Over the past years, Kyle has been researching user identity and encryption in a local-first context which we explore in depth in this episode."

Building a Sync Engine in Clojure by Stepan Parunashvili

"The best apps today have a common feature set: they’re multiplayer by default, support optimistic updates, and work even when offline. To build these apps, companies like Figma, Linear, and Notion have made custom sync engines. Sync engines give developers a database that they can use on the client. Developers subscribe to queries, while the engine handles reactivity, optimistic updates, and rollback. We built this infrastructure in Clojure. In this talk, we’ll show how to build one too: from the schema choices made, to methods for detecting novelty, handling permissions, optimistic updates, and offline mode."

Is “SQL from the frontend” viable?

'I’ve worked on apps with a “SQL from the client” architecture and the development velocity was simply superb. At the same time, it comes with a lot of challenges in terms of security and scalability. So, what’s the deal? Is it viable or not?'

"Local-first is the natural next step of user experience. Making things persist locally allows for near-zero latency for interactions, better user experiences, and more resilient clients in low-to-no internet connections. I predict this will become particularly important as user expectations for software continues to rise in the future." See also Reddit discussion.

Local First Meetup @ Convex HQ (upcoming event)

"Learn the critical elements of building local-first applications and how real-time databases and sync engines push the limits of offline app development. Hear talks from: Stepan Parunashvili, CTO at Instant. Felicia Chang, Founding Engineer at Jamsocket. Ian Macartney, Product Engineer at Convex." Thursday, November 21, 5:30pm PST.

Local-First: A Crazy New Way to Build Apps (upcoming talk)

"Come check out my remote talk at @thejsnation on Nov 18 & 21! It'll be a really nice intro to @jazz_tools and how to think about local-first, especially if you haven't heard about it before." - @anselm_io

🛠️ Tools & Resources

An Object Sync Engine for Local-first Apps

"This post focuses on what we believe is a sweet spot for local-first web applications: the object sync engine [...] We're currently working on our own object sync engine at Convex, which will make the platform a great batteries-included option for building local-first apps. In this post, we’ll break down the sync engine's components, discuss the prior art with LunaDB1, Linear, and Replicache, and outline what we’re building at Convex."

Local-First Budgeting

"From the start, we aimed to ensure the experience was as fast as possible. A single user's transaction data is a fairly small dataset, so it requires minimal storage on a user's device. We looked at complex sync patterns and libraries but ultimately settled on a simple incremental ETL endpoint from our backend (a Rails app)."

Solid Socket: Signals meets WebSockets

"Solid-socket now supports... A simple but powerful sync engine to build local first apps" - @devagrawal09

Get Your Head Out of the Cloud: Embracing Local-First Apps with Nuxt

'Thanks @NuxtNation and everyone who attended my talk today on "Get Your Head Out of the Cloud: Embracing Local-First Apps with Nuxt." As promised, my slides are included in the repo for the app I demo'd today.' - @bencodezen

✨ Apps

MidFunnel - Sales Acceleration Platform

"Most mobile apps these days are local first apps, they rely on storing and processing data locally and syncing it with the server in the background. Thus, giving the perception of being lightning fast and responsive." "We’re experimenting on leveraging PowerSync with our MobX stores to create a powerful sync engine and gift users a super fast and delightful local first web app." - Gayanga Kuruppu

Clibu Notes - Effortless Note-Taking, Anywhere, Anytime on Any Device.

"Clibu Notes is a note-taking and PKM app that works on desktop, tablet and smartphone. Local first, real time sync, first class editing, backlinks, notes tree etc." - @getclibu

Nomad Wallet: An expense tracking app designed specifically for travel

"Finally, my offline first app with @supabase + @powersync_ is live! I used to use @realm and switched to @powersync_ this time, so far so good!" - @MinhoKo120

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