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Comment by profsummergig | Hacker News Reader

Someone please clarify what "local-first" means in this context. Thank you.

Local-first generally refers to apps that work with a local client database which syncs with a server database in the background. Reads and writes go to the local database first. This results in very low latency and not being dependent on the network for working with data. The term is often applied loosely and architectures and implementations differ quite a bit.

This community has been central to the idea of local-first: https://localfirstweb.dev/

The term local-first was coined by Martin Kleppmann et al in this essay: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

Thank you.

In the context of Web Apps, I suppose this means that data is first stored to some sort of in-browser storage and synced to remote in the background.

Yes, using IndexedDB is common, and increasingly also running SQLite in the browser using Wasm, with its data persisted through a VFS that uses IndexedDB or OPFS. https://www.powersync.com/blog/sqlite-persistence-on-the-web

Hey dawg, I heard u like client-server... so I put client-server in ur client-server so u can client-serve while you client-serve.

Jesus Christ, can you imagine every shitty website on the planet using Wasmed SQLite in the future... I just shuddered with horror.

Assuming it means sites can still run when there's no internet, using local storage for caching when internet is back up and service workers to poll in the background.

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