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Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

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Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#171

Post by ChadNauseam »

blixt wrote: post #45

I've been very impressed by Jazz -- it enables great DX (you're mostly writing sync, imperative code) and great UX (everything feels instant, you can work offline, etc). Main problems I have are related to distribution and longevity -- as the article mentions, it only grows in data (which is not a big deal if most clients don't have to see that), and another thing I think is more important is that it's lacking good s…

Yeah, Jazz is amazing. The DX is unmatched. My issue when I used it was, they mainly supported passkey-based encryption, which was poorly implemented on windows. That made it kind of a non-starter for me, although I'm sure they'll support traditional auth methods soon. But I love that it's end-to-end encrypted and it's super fun to use.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#172

Post by CodingJeebus »

mentalgear wrote: post #27

Local-First & Sync-Engines are the future. Here's a great filterable datatable overview of the local-first framework landscape: https://www.localfirst.fm/landscape My favorite so far is Triplit.dev (which can also be combined with TanStack DB); 2 more I like to explore are PowerSync and NextGraph. Also, the recent LocalFirst Conf has some great videos, currently watching the NextGraph one ( https://www.youtube.com/wa…

How is the database migration support for these tools?

Needing to support clients that don’t phone home for an extended period and therefore need to be rolled forward from a really old schema state seems like a major hassle, but maybe I’m missing something. Trying to troubleshoot one-off front end bugs for a single product user can be real a pain, I’d hate to see what it’s like when you have to factor in the state of their schema as well

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#173

Post by freedomben »

bombcar wrote: post #160
mossTechnician wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News comment sections are the only part of the internet that still feel "impossibly fast" to me. Even on Android, thousands of comments can scroll as fast as the OS permits, and the DOM is so simple that I've reopened day-old tabs to discover the page is still loaded. Even projects like Mastodon and Lemmy, which aren't beholden to modern web standards, have shifted to significant client-side scripting that lac…

The modern webbroswer trick of "you haven't looked at this tab in an hour, so we killed/unloaded it" is infuriating.

I would like this feature if I had more control over it. The worst part is when clicking a tab that was unloaded which makes a new (fresh) web request when I don't want it to

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#174

Post by smj-edison »

integralid wrote: post #118
mike_hearn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To see this first hand try this website if you're in Europe (maybe it's also fast in the US, not sure): https://www.jpro.one/ ? The entire thing is a JavaFX app (i.e. desktop app), streaming DOM diffs to the browser to render its UI. Every click is processed server side (scrolling is client side). Yet it's actually one of the faster websites out there, at least for me. It looks and feels like a really fast and modern…

>the only time you know it's not the same thing is if you go offline or have bad connectivity. So, like most of the non-first world? Hell, I'm in a smaller town/village next to my capital city for a month and internet connection is unreliable. Having said that, the website was usable for me - I wouldn't say it's noticeably fast, but it was not show either.

I feel like it depends a lot on what kind of website you're using. Note taking app? Definitely should work offline. CRUD interface? You already need to be constantly online, since every operation needs to talk to the server.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#175

Post by aboodman »

> Using Zero is another option, it has many similarities to Electric, while also directly supporting mutations.

The core differentiator of Zero is actually query-driven sync. We apparently need to make this more clear.

You build your app out of queries. You don't have to decide or configure what to sync up front. You can sync as much, or as little as you want, just by deciding which queries to run.

If Zero does not have the data that it needs on the client, queries automatically fall back to the server. Then that data is synced, and available for next query.

This ends up being really useful for:

- Any reasonably sized app. You can't sync all data to client.

- Fast startup. Most apps have publicly visible views that they want to load fast.

- Permissions. Zero doesn't require you to express your permissions in some separate system, you just use queries.

So the experience of using Zero is actually much closer to a reactive db, something like Convex or RethinkDB ().

Except that it uses standard Postgres, and you also get the instant interactions of a sync engine.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#176

Post by aidenn0 »

bombcar wrote: post #160
mossTechnician wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News comment sections are the only part of the internet that still feel "impossibly fast" to me. Even on Android, thousands of comments can scroll as fast as the OS permits, and the DOM is so simple that I've reopened day-old tabs to discover the page is still loaded. Even projects like Mastodon and Lemmy, which aren't beholden to modern web standards, have shifted to significant client-side scripting that lac…

The modern webbroswer trick of "you haven't looked at this tab in an hour, so we killed/unloaded it" is infuriating.

Particularly if you have maybe 40 tabs open and 128GB of ram.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#177

Post by JusticeJuice »

I remember being literally 12 when google docs was launched, which featured real-time sync, and a collaborative cursor. I remember thinking that this is how all web experience will be in the future, at the time 'cloud computing' was the buzzword - I (incorrectly) thought realtime collaboration was the very definition of cloud computing.

And then it just... never happened. 20 years went by, and most web products are still CRUD experiences, such as this site included.

The funny thing is it feels like it's been on the verge of becoming mainstream for all this time. When meteor.js got popular I was really excited, and then with react surely it was gonna happen - but even now, it's still not the default choice for new software.

I'm still really excited to see it happen, and I do think it will happen eventually - it's just trickier than it looks, and it's tricky to make the tooling so cheap that it's worth it in all situations.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#178

Post by levmiseri »

JusticeJuice wrote: post #177

I remember being literally 12 when google docs was launched, which featured real-time sync, and a collaborative cursor. I remember thinking that this is how all web experience will be in the future, at the time 'cloud computing' was the buzzword - I (incorrectly) thought realtime collaboration was the very definition of cloud computing. And then it just... never happened. 20 years went by, and most web products are s…

I feel the same way. The initial magic of real-timeness felt like a glimpse into a future that... where is it?

I'm still excited about the prospects of it — shameless plug: actually building a tool with one-of-a-kind messaging experience that's truly real-time in the Google docs collaboration way (no compose box, no send button): https://kraa.io/hackernews

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#179

Post by whizzter »

bob1029 wrote: post #133

I'm all-in on SSR. The client shouldn't have any state other than the session token, current URL and DOM. Networks and servers will only get faster. Speed of light is constant, but we aren't even using its full capabilities right now. Hollow core fiber promises upward of 30% reduction in latency for everyone using the internet. There are RF-based solutions that provide some of this promise today. Even ignoring a wild…

RightToolForTheRightJob!

Would you try to write/work on a collaboratibe text document (ie Google Docs or Sheets?) by editing a paragraph/sentence that's server side rendered and hope nobody changes the paragraph mid-work because the developers insisted on SSR ?

These kinds of tools (Docs, Sheets, Figma, Linear,etc) work well because changes have little impact but conflict resolution is better avoided by users noticing that someone else is working on it and hopefully just get realtime updates.

Then again, hotel booking or similar has no need for something like that.

Then there's been middle-ground like an enterprise logistics app that had some badly YOLO'd syncing, it kinda needed some of it but there was no upfront planning and it took a time to retrofit a sane design since there was so much domain and system specifics things lurking with surprises.

Re: Linear sent me down a local-first rabbit hole

#180

Post by nwienert »

levmiseri wrote: post #178
JusticeJuice wrote: post #177

I remember being literally 12 when google docs was launched, which featured real-time sync, and a collaborative cursor. I remember thinking that this is how all web experience will be in the future, at the time 'cloud computing' was the buzzword - I (incorrectly) thought realtime collaboration was the very definition of cloud computing. And then it just... never happened. 20 years went by, and most web products are s…

I feel the same way. The initial magic of real-timeness felt like a glimpse into a future that... where is it? I'm still excited about the prospects of it — shameless plug: actually building a tool with one-of-a-kind messaging experience that's truly real-time in the Google docs collaboration way (no compose box, no send button): https://kraa.io/hackernews

Agreed, I did a talk about exactly this earlier this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjV3Dm5giko

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