Are Sync Engines The Future of Web Applications?

1

Trello

Remember I said that some apps address these issues much better than others? Recent famous examples are Linear and Figma. Both have disrupted incredibly competitive markets by being technologically superior. Other examples are Superhuman and a decade prior, Trello. When you look into what they did, you discover that they all converged on very similar patterns, and they all developed their respective implementations in-house. You can read about how they did it (highly recommended) in these links: Figma, Linear, Superhuman, Trello (series).

#Project Management #Task Management #Productivity 246 social mentions

2

Superhuman

Remember I said that some apps address these issues much better than others? Recent famous examples are Linear and Figma. Both have disrupted incredibly competitive markets by being technologically superior. Other examples are Superhuman and a decade prior, Trello. When you look into what they did, you discover that they all converged on very similar patterns, and they all developed their respective implementations in-house. You can read about how they did it (highly recommended) in these links: Figma, Linear, Superhuman, Trello (series).

#Email #Email Clients #Email Productivity 25 social mentions

3

Reflect.net

Crazy plot twist (last minute edit): As I was about to publish this post I discovered that Replicache is going to be opened sourced in the near future and that its parent company is planning to launch a new sync-engine called "Zero". Here is the official announcement. It reads: "We will be open sourcing Replicache and Reflect. Once Zero is ready, we will encourage users to move." Ironically, Zero seems to be yet another solution that automagically syncs the backend database with the frontend database, which at least for me personally seems less attractive (because I want separation of concerns and control). With that said, these guys are experts in this domain and I am just a dude on the internet so we'll have to wait and see. In the meanwhile, I plan on playing with Replicache some more.

#Developer Tools #TypeScript Framework #Identity And Access Management 3 social mentions

4

PouchDB

If you've been following trends in the web-dev world, you'd know that sync engines have been a centrepiece in several of them, namely: progressive web apps, offline-first apps, and the lately trending term: local-first software. You might have even looked into some of the databases that offer a built-in sync engine such as PouchDb or online services that do the same (e.g., Firestore). I have too, but my general feeling over the last few years has been that none of it is quite hitting the nail on the head. Progressive web apps were about users "installing" shortcuts to websites on their home screens as if they were native apps, despite not needing installation being maybe "the" benefit of the web. "Offline-first" made it sound like offline mode is more important than online, which for 99% of web apps is simply not the case. "Local-first" is admittedly the best name so far, but the official local-first manifesto talks about peer-to-peer communication and CRDTs (a super cool idea but one that is rarely used for anything besides collaborative text editing) in a world of full client-server web applications that are trying to solve practical problems like the ones I described above. Ironically, many tools that are part of the current "local-first" wave adopted the name without adopting all the principles.

#Databases #NoSQL Databases #Developer Tools 32 social mentions

5

Cloud Firestore

If you've been following trends in the web-dev world, you'd know that sync engines have been a centrepiece in several of them, namely: progressive web apps, offline-first apps, and the lately trending term: local-first software. You might have even looked into some of the databases that offer a built-in sync engine such as PouchDb or online services that do the same (e.g., Firestore). I have too, but my general feeling over the last few years has been that none of it is quite hitting the nail on the head. Progressive web apps were about users "installing" shortcuts to websites on their home screens as if they were native apps, despite not needing installation being maybe "the" benefit of the web. "Offline-first" made it sound like offline mode is more important than online, which for 99% of web apps is simply not the case. "Local-first" is admittedly the best name so far, but the official local-first manifesto talks about peer-to-peer communication and CRDTs (a super cool idea but one that is rarely used for anything besides collaborative text editing) in a world of full client-server web applications that are trying to solve practical problems like the ones I described above. Ironically, many tools that are part of the current "local-first" wave adopted the name without adopting all the principles.

#Developer Tools #Development Tools #Backend As A Service 46 social mentions