localfirst.fm

The guest of this episode is James Arthur, founder and CEO of Electric SQL, a Postgres-centric sync engine for local-first apps. This conversation will dive deep into how Electric works and explore its design decisions such as read-path syncing and using HTTP as the network layer to improve scalability. Towards the end we are also covering PGLite, a new Postgres in WASM project by Electric. 

Mentioned in podcast

• James Arthur: x.com/thruflo / bsky.app/profile/thruflo
• ElectricSQL
• ElectricSQL - Quickstart
• ElectricSQL - Github
• Discord - ElectricSQL
• PGlite
• PGlite - Github
• database.build
• trigger.dev

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to PowerSync and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

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. This conversation will dive into the story that led Kyle to local-first including what he calls Web 2.5 and Zero Servers.

Editor's Note: when Kyle speaks about SilentJS, is actually referring to QuiteJS (link below)

Mentioned in podcast

• Kyle Simpson: x.com/getifyX / me.getify.com
• Local-peer-to-peer
• Webauthn-local-client
• Local-data-lock
• Local-vault
• Storage
• Qr-data-sync
• Vella.ai
• Socket Supply
• You-Dont-Know-JS
• LoFi.so
• QuietJS
  
  

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to PowerSync and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Anselm Eickhoff, creator of Jazz and founder of Garden Computing. This conversation will dive deep into Jazz to learn how it works and which use cases it’s a good fit for by exploring various apps already built on top of Jazz. 

Mentioned in podcast

• Anselm Eickhoff: x.com/anselm_io / anselm.io
• jazz.tools
• Garden Computing

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to PowerSync and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Tuomas Artman, co-founder and CTO of Linear. Prior to Linear, Tuomas had already built sync engines for over a decade at companies like Groupon and Uber. This conversation will explore how local-first and software quality was crucial for Linear’s success and how the concept of a startup MVP should be rethought. 

Mentioned in podcast

• Tuomas Artman: x.com/artman / github.com/artman
• Linear
• Scaling the Linear Sync Engine
• Rethinking the startup Mvp: Building a competitive product
• Unexpected benefits of going local-first - Tuomas Artman (Local-First Conf)

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to PowerSync and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Matthew Weidner, a computer science PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University focussing on distributed systems and local-first software. Matthew has recently published an extensive blog post about architectures for central server collaboration which is explored in depth in this conversation comparing different approaches such as CRDTs and event sourcing.

Mentioned in podcast

• Matthew Weidner: x.com/MatthewWeidner3 / mattweidner.com
• Architectures for Central Server Collaboration
• TRVE Data project
• Shapiro 2011 paper
• Carlos Baquero papers
• CRDT paper (the "very theoretical" one)
• Collabs: Docs / Paper
• Jupiter collaboration system from the 90s
• Building on Quicksand
• Immutability Changes Everything
• Ink & Switch's Upwelling
• list-positions
• Fractional indexing

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to Expo and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Maggie Appleton, a designer, anthropologist and developer who has recently explored the world of local-first by giving the closing keynote at the last local-first conf. This conversation will dive into the topics of her talk including home cooked software, the idea behind barefoot developers and how AI complements local-first software development. 

Mentioned in podcast

• Maggie Appleton: x.com/Mappletons + maggieappleton.com
• Home-cooked Software and Barefoot Programmers: Maggie Appleton (Local-First Conf)
• Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to Expo and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is James Pearce, the author of Tinybase, a reactive data store library for local-first apps. This conversation will explore how Tinybase works including its custom query system, the various persistence and syncing integrations as well as James’ plans for the future. 

Mentioned in podcast

• James Pearce: x.com/jamespearce + scoutsailing.com
• TinyBase
• TinyHub

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Adam Wiggins, who is the founder of Heroku and one of the co-authors of the local-first essay by Ink & Switch. As Adam is also a co-organizer of the first local-first conference, this conversation will reflect on the event, share our learnings and discuss a couple of key topics such as a new definition of local-first software. 

Mentioned in podcast

• Adam Wiggins: x.com/_adamwiggins_ + adamwiggins.com
• Browsertech Digest Trip Report: Local First Conf
• Alice and Bob in wonderland. Bootstrapping identity and authority in a world without servers.

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Matt Wonlaw, a prolific local-first tool builder who’s behind projects such as Vlcn, cr-sqlite and Materialite. Most recently Matt also joined Rocicorp to work on their new product. This conversation will go deep on his projects covering CRDTs, SQLite and incremental view maintenance.

Mentioned in podcast

• Matt Wonlaw: x.com/tantaman + github.com/tantaman
• RemoteStorage
• ownCloud
• The Virtual Table Mechanism Of SQLite
• Towards a General Database Management System of Conflict-Free Replicated Relations
• Materialite benchmark

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and Rocicorp for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Dax Raad, who is using local-first in multiple projects including the serverless deployment tool SST.dev, a healthcare app and an upcoming personal finance app. This conversation will explore how local-first simplifies app development, the UX and data patterns he used on and how self-hosting could empower local-first apps.

Mentioned in podcast

• Dax Raad: x.com/thdxr + thdxr.com
• SST.dev
• Rethinking the startup MVP: Building a competitive product.

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Pirijan Ketheswaran, the creator of the Kinopio, a playful, canvas-based tool for thought. He is also the co-creator of the online IDE Glitch. This conversation will go trough his journey as a creative including his time at Fog Creek and later building Kinopio as a solo developer.

Mentioned in podcast

• Pirijan Ketheswaran: x.com/pketh + pketh.org
• Mastodon: @[email protected]
• kinopio.club
• First Four Years of Glitch 
• Kinopio: Building Offline
• are.na/kinopio

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is James Long, the creator of local-first app called Actual Budget and the absurd-sql project which helped to pave the way to bring SQLite back to the browser. This conversation will explore his journey of building Actual Budget including implementing a syncing solution from scratch and expanding from an Electron app to mobile and the web while re-using most of the code. 

Mentioned in podcast

• James Long: x.com/jlongster + jlongster.com
• James Long: Where Have I Been?
• Actual Budget on GitHub 
• actualbudget.org
• Hybrid Logical Clocks
• Nodejs-mobile
• absurd-sql

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Rasmus Anderson, who helped to build many monumental products such as Spotify, Dropbox and Figma and is now working on Playbit, a local-first operating system built from scratch. 
This extended conversation will go deep on software quality, the tradeoffs of different data models and the importance of the web for modern applications. 

Mentioned in podcast

• Rasmus Andersson: x.com/rsms + rsms.me
• Playbit

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode is Kyle Matthews, who, in the past, founded Gatsby JS and is currently delving into local-first software. 
In the conversation, Kyle shares his experiences in building some small-scale local-first apps for his personal use and discusses how the utilization of a data syncing engine liberates significant development time.

Mentioned in podcast

• Kyle Mathews: x.com/kylemathews +  bricolage.io 
• bricolage.io/some-notes-on-local-first-development
• bricolage.io/build-notes-micro-apps-time-distribution
• electric-sql

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

The guest of this episode, Martin Kleppmann, is one of the authors of the original local-first essay. Martin has been exploring local-first software and CRDTs for over 10 years, which has led to the creation of Automerge, which we discuss in depth in this episode. This episode is also exploring the ideas of generic sync servers and the impact this technology could have on local-first software in the future.

Mentioned in podcast

• Martin Kleppmann: martin.kleppmann.com + x.com/martinkl + bsky.app/profile/martin.kleppmann.com + nondeterministic.computer/@martin
• Ink & Switch
• Bluesky
• Automerge CRDTs
• The original CRDT paper
• Our JSON CRDT paper
• Our design for rich text in Automerge
• How Bluesky works

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm
• Local-First Conf 2024

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

In this episode we talk about Geoffrey's background in malleable software and how relational databases can be leveraged to build better web apps and improve data ownership. A topic he extensively investigates through the Riffle research project.

Mentioned in podcast

• Geoffrey Litt: x.com/geoffreylitt + www.geoffreylitt.com
•  Ink and Switch
•  Cambria (2020)
•  Riffle essay (2022)
•  Riffle paper (2023)

Links:

•  Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

In this episode we talk about Aaron's history in local-first, which goes back to 2008 with the release of Google Gears – the first time sqlite was added to the browser - and his perspective on where we're at now and why local-first is finally happening.

Mentioned in podcast:

• Aaron: x.com/aboodman + aaronboodman.com
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_(software)
• rocicorp.dev
• replicache.dev
• reflect.net

Links:

• Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.

In this inaugural episode, I'm speaking to Peter van Hardenberg, who helped to coin and popularize the term Local First. As the director of the Ink & Switch Research Lab, he's been on the forefront of this work for the better part of a decade. My conversation with him today starts with the basics of what Local First is and why you, an application developer, should care about it.

Mentioned in podcast:

• Peter: x.com/pvh + pvh.ca
• inkandswitch.com/local-first
• inkandswitch.com
• automerge.org

Links:

• Website: localfirst.fm
• X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm
• YouTube: youtube.com/@localfirstfm

Thank you to Expo and CrabNebula for supporting the podcast.