localfirst.fm

A podcast about local-first software development

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#15 – Tuomas Artman: Linear, sync engines, rethought startup MVP

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. 

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#14 – Matthew Weidner: Architectures for Central Server Collaboration

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.

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#13 – Maggie Appleton: Barefoot Developers, AI, end-user programming

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. 

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#12 – James Pearce: Tinybase

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. 

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#11 – Adam Wiggins: Local-first Conf 2024

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. 

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#9 – Dax Raad: Local-First SaaS

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.

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#7 – James Long: Actual Budget, Hybrid Logical Clocks & Absurd-SQL

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. 

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#6 – Rasmus Andersson: Playbit, Software Quality, Data Models Tradeoffs

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. 

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#4 – Martin Kleppmann: CRDTs, Automerge, generic syncing servers & Bluesky

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.

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#1 – PVH: An Intro to Local-First

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.

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