Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud

Re:Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the ... by ryandrake on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @09:04PM (#21590793)

A lot of software doesn’t have to be “hosted” anywhere. The first question I usually have when trying out some web-based software is: “Why on earth can’t this be a native application that I just download and run? Why are they shoving a web browser and server into this thing?” With a cross-platform native application, you bypass the whole on-prem vs hosted question entirely.

I wonder how often the answer is simply “We know lots of JavaScript programmers and not a lot of Qt programmers.” Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

As a user, I strongly favor software I buy once, download, and run as-is, forever, untethered to the Internet.

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Re:Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the ... by masukomi on Thursday November 21, 2019 @03:13PM (#21598993)

i agree but would add that there are a number of reasons why your browser as the client is a better long term strategy that minimizes maintenance. Unless you want a really generic geeky bare-bones UI. Native UI toolkits don't have a long lifespan. You constantly need to tweak what you've built for changes in the latest version of the OS.

However, that doesn't mean it needs to be "hosted" anywhere. It's trivial to make an app run a little web server that they access with their browser instead of a native or QT UI.

Browser based interfaces are an excellent bet (probably the best bet) for "run as-is, forever" or as close to "forever" as we can reasonably get right now.

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