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Local-first software (2019)

(www.inkandswitch.com)
863 points gasull | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.535s | source
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davepeck ◴[] No.44473558[source]
In theory, I love the local-first mode of building. It aligns well with “small tech” philosophy where privacy and data ownership are fundamental.

In practice, it’s hard! You’re effectively responsible for building a sync engine, handling conflict resolution, managing schema migration, etc.

This said, tools for local-first software development seem to have improved in the past couple years. I keep my eye on jazz.tools, electric-sql, and Rocicorp’s Zero. Are there others?

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1. swsieber ◴[] No.44476540[source]
I've been using instantdb in anger for the past month or so for a side project of mine. I'm building a personal budget app.

I should probably write a blog post, but I will say that I investigated power sync, electricSQL, livestore and powersync before. I briefly looked at jazz tools but wanted something a bit more structured.

I'm pretty impressed this far. I've actually been writing it with Vue and a community library. Permissions were a bit tricky, but once I figured it out it was simple. And I like their magic email login. And I like their dashboard/reply, but there are a few big changes I would make there to make it less fiddly.

I love that it's open source, and that if I want to, I could self host it.

As for the other options:

- jazz wasn't structured enough

- livestore came off as too fiddly with the event store, but it was appealing. That the dev tools are payealled was disappointing, but understandable

- electriSQL really only provided half a solution (read, not the write model

- couchDB / pouchDB wasn't structured enough for me, and I wanted better cross document support than was obvious / baked in.

- did not investigate zero really

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2. stopachka ◴[] No.44482117[source]
[Instant founder]

Brightened reading this. If you have any feedback please let us know! We on the discord, and answer over on founders@instantdb

3. mikegin ◴[] No.44483151[source]
+1 for instant! Been using it and I find it a breeze to work with, definitely filling the exact niche this article was discussing. sync engines are the future!