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How to synchronize reactive local-first apps with TinyBase

Blog post from Expo

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
James Pearce
Word Count
2,587
Company Posts That Month
5
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Post removed?
No
Summary

James Pearce, a former Engineering Director at Meta, reflects on the cyclical nature of technical trends, specifically highlighting the resurgence of the "Local First" movement in software development. Historically, applications were installed locally on devices, offering responsive performance but limited data sharing and storage capacity. The shift to cloud-based solutions has improved collaboration and data security but often sacrifices user experience and data sovereignty. Pearce introduces TinyBase, an open-source JavaScript data store designed for local-first applications, which combines in-memory data management with local storage persistence and device synchronization capabilities. TinyBase supports key-value and relational database semantics, allowing developers to build apps that are responsive and can sync data across devices using conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs). Despite the advantages of cloud computing, Pearce advocates for exploring local-first approaches, which provide greater control and privacy, and invites developers to experiment with these techniques to refine and expand the model for future applications.

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