126: James Long - Building Distributed Local-First JavaScript Applications

Full Stack Radio

Topics include:

• How do you keep data synchronized between two different clients when all of the data is stored locally instead of in the cloud?
• Understanding conflict-free replicated data types and how they help when building distributed applications
• Diving deep into how messages are replayed across clients when network access becomes available to achieve consistent state
• Using a Merkle tree to efficiently compare the message store from two clients to know which messages need to be synchronized
• Considerations you need to make when structuring your data to enable eventual consistency
• What it might look like to move an app like Actual to an offline-first web app where you can't use things like SQLite

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Links:

• Actual
• Electron
• Conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT)
• Hybrid logical clock
• Merkle tree