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What if serverless meant no backend servers?

subzero.cloud

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Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#81

Post by oneplane »

RangerScience wrote: post #30
oneplane wrote: post #20

"It depends". On one hand, if I were to have the goal to make a bunch of money, and software just happens to be the means to an end, making a gated software portal where I control everything would suit me very well. You get nothing until I get the money, and I only maintain what I want to maintain. (pretty much the model every SaaS has) On the other hand, if I know I have a very small customer base, and everyone is m…

> (third hand?) You might like https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/392/what-is-the-or... - it's like "grok" tho, only (certain) other nerds will get it. But, it's a nice phrase; IMHO it's less "third hand" and more "third option/perspective that renders the prior two moot".

Neat! I completely forgot about that, and it's nice to re-discover the gripping hand.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#82

Post by jp57 »

I like the idea of a hybrid of client-side software that optionally uses third-party cloud storage for cross-device sync. NetNewsWire, ByWord (markdown editor), and Scrivener are some examples. Older versions of 1Password also had this, but I don't know if it still does anymore.

Some of these programs managed this better than others. NetnewsWire and 1Password seemed to just work. Byword and Scrivener had occasional sync conflicts that had to be resolved. In general, though, this seems like a nice system: if you (the user) are subscribed to cloud storage, then you get syncing without paying for an extra service. If not, you can still use the software without syncing.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#83

Post by jeremyjh »

TheCoreh wrote: post #44
xmprt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflict resolution logic is typically application specific so it would be hard to get something like this working in practice.

iCloud already supports this, and from what I gather it works decently well: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidocumentst... https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2336... Essentially there's an OS mechanism for getting the different versions of the file, your app can detect conflicts and choose how to resolve them, including by displaying arbitrary UI to the user. IIRC This UI can ev…

> your app can detect conflicts and choose how to resolve

Like GP said - app specific. If I have two different versions of a SQLite database, that started from a common revision but were both updated independently, and want the updates that were applied in each of them to be preserved - there is quite a lot of work left to do after Apple throws their hands up.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#85

Post by samwillis »

dunham wrote: post #80
samwillis wrote: post #50

These ideas are some of the founding principles of "local-first software": https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ As I like to put it - Local-first is the real serverless. Your user's device is the real edge. I think the future of the web needs to be that the server is optional, we need our data (albeit personal or our companies) to be on our own devices. We are all carrying around these massively powerful devices…

Hopefully the sync tech being developed for it is solidly open, but it's good to have access to your data regardless. The thing that always bothered me about that article is: > Notably, the object server is open source and self-hostable, which reduces the risk of being locked in to a service that might one day disappear. It appears that the object server is neither open source and nor self-hostable. The repository th…

There are many projects developing sync tech for local-first, I work on a fully open source one - ElectricSQL - and we are fortunate to have a couple of the CRDT co-inventors on the team. We maintain a list of any local-first sync project we know of here: https://electric-sql.com/docs/reference/alternatives

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#86

Post by myaccountonhn »

gvkhna wrote: post #21

I want this too, there isn’t a great FOSS way to currently do this besides supabase or roll your own unfortunately. For PWA local save/write, try network update, refresh local upon success is the gold standard for data integrity. And for network reading fallback to local cache upon offline is great for UX. I haven’t found good tooling for this yet and i’ve been looking.

I haven't worked too hard on this, but wouldn't SQLite work?

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#87

Post by jerbear4328 »

poyu wrote: post #78
wolpoli wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could just package the nodejs code and v8 engine together and ship them to the browser for execution.

We can also just ship it with a browser?! Oh wait!

I think you are looking for Shadow.

https://shadow.goose.icu

Or just the whole kitchen sink. Why not?

http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#88

Post by [deleted] »

samwillis wrote: post #50

These ideas are some of the founding principles of "local-first software": https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ As I like to put it - Local-first is the real serverless. Your user's device is the real edge. I think the future of the web needs to be that the server is optional, we need our data (albeit personal or our companies) to be on our own devices. We are all carrying around these massively powerful devices…

[deleted]

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#89

Post by solatic »

Show me where you store the data.

If you store it on your phone, then it's not showing up on your other devices. If you lose or break your phone, then your data is gone. There are very few applications for which that's acceptable - basically just your calculator app.

If you don't store it on your phone, then it's stored on some kind of server, somewhere. Do you own and control that server, or does someone else? How does the application consume and update the data?

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