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I agree with most of the points made in the article and I think this is wonderfully written. But I disagree with the conclusion. I want local first software to

I agree with most of the points made in the article and I think this is wonderfully written. But I disagree with the conclusion. I want local first software to be the future. But even mobile apps, where much of this has been possible since day one, rarely work correctly offline. Unfortunately the user experience benefits vs the development complexities tradeoff mean that teams don’t do it unless they’re absolutely forced to.

mentalgear 2y ago
Therefore sync/engine layers like rxdb or Triplit.dev exist: to remove the complexity and have a "plug & play" system, without requiring each project/dev team to figure out those same problems from scratch.
- afavour 2y ago
  Yes I know but that’s still only part of the puzzle. And why bother when you can just… not bother? Will it make the company more money? Lead to more sales? That’s why stuff like this is hard to prioritise. If developers ran the ship from top to bottom you’d probably see more stuff like this in use. But product justifications are difficult to come by. (notable that the article is written by someone at RxDB so they’re not exactly unbiased in their judgement)
darkwater 2y ago
My pet peeve here is the Fastmail app in Android. It doesn't even open if there is no internet connection! Why? I'm pretty sure it caches already many mails locally, why doesn't it work?
- nmjenkins 2y ago
  Support is coming soon, available now in public beta: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/offline-in-beta/ https://www.fastmail.com/blog/offline-in-beta/
  - darkwater 2y ago
    Super cool, I wasn't aware, thanks for sharing! Anyway, from the blog post: > Calendar reminders will not show a notification. This means that notifications are generated server-side and pushed to the device. I guess this is to...save battery? Wouldn't a background process work well enough, battery-wise?

mentalgear 2y ago

Therefore sync/engine layers like rxdb or Triplit.dev exist: to remove the complexity and have a "plug & play" system, without requiring each project/dev team to figure out those same problems from scratch.

afavour 2y ago
Yes I know but that’s still only part of the puzzle. And why bother when you can just… not bother? Will it make the company more money? Lead to more sales? That’s why stuff like this is hard to prioritise. If developers ran the ship from top to bottom you’d probably see more stuff like this in use. But product justifications are difficult to come by. (notable that the article is written by someone at RxDB so they’re not exactly unbiased in their judgement)

darkwater 2y ago

My pet peeve here is the Fastmail app in Android. It doesn't even open if there is no internet connection! Why? I'm pretty sure it caches already many mails locally, why doesn't it work?

nmjenkins 2y ago
Support is coming soon, available now in public beta: https://www.fastmail.com/blog/offline-in-beta/ https://www.fastmail.com/blog/offline-in-beta/
- darkwater 2y ago
  Super cool, I wasn't aware, thanks for sharing! Anyway, from the blog post: > Calendar reminders will not show a notification. This means that notifications are generated server-side and pushed to the device. I guess this is to...save battery? Wouldn't a background process work well enough, battery-wise?