The guest of this episode is Adam Wulf, the engineer and solopreneur behind Muse, a local-first canvas-based tool for thought. This conversation will get trough the evolution of Muse as a product, company and people who made it, reflecting on the joys and struggles of building software as a team of one. Later, the conversation will dive deep into t…

Join us at the 2025 Winter Tech Forum! www.wintertechforum.com Projects Mentioned: uv for Python TypeScript Effect Pkl CloudFormation Extras Pkl GitHub Actions Other Episodes Mentioned: #81 TypeScript & Effects with Michael Arnaldi #97 The Pkl Configuration Language with Philip Hölzenspies

The guest of this episode is Brooklyn Zelenka, a local-first researcher and creator of various projects including UCAN and Beehive. This conversation, will go deep on authorization and access control in a decentralized, local-first environment and explore this topic by learning about UCAN and Beehive. Later, the conversation will also diving into B…

This is a special episode which was recorded as a Twitter space conversation between Gordon Brander, Peter Van Hardenberg, and Jess Martin. This conversation explores the ideas and trade offs of apps versus files. Mentioned in podcast Gordon Brander Peter van Hardenberg Jess Martin Links: Website: localfirst.fm X/Twitter: x.com/localfirstfm YouTube…

We chat with Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer, about the joy of programming and the tensions between our and others needs. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

Jutta Eckstein is expanding the concepts of Agile to be a company-wide model, instead of a niche process for software developers. We chat with her about the book "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy" which she co-authored on this subject. For more details on the book and many free resources, see: www.agilebossanova.c…

The guest of this episode is James Arthur, founder and CEO of Electric SQL, a Postgres-centric sync engine for local-first apps. This conversation will dive deep into how Electric works and explore its design decisions such as read-path syncing and using HTTP as the network layer to improve scalability. Towards the end we are also covering PGLite, …

The guest of this episode is Kyle Simpson, a prolific JavaScript engineer and author of the book You Don’t Know JS. Over the past years, Kyle has been researching user identity and encryption in a local-first context which we explore in depth in this episode. This conversation will dive into the story that led Kyle to local-first including what he …

The guest of this episode is Anselm Eickhoff, creator of Jazz and founder of Garden Computing. This conversation will dive deep into Jazz to learn how it works and which use cases it’s a good fit for by exploring various apps already built on top of Jazz. Mentioned in podcast Anselm Eickhoff: x.com/anselm_io / anselm.io jazz.tools Garden Computing …

Nathan Sobo is co-founder of Zed, a super-fast, collaborative, AI-powered, code editor. We chat about his journey to build the ultimate code editor: lessons learned from building Atom, Electron and its challenges, CRDTs, Rust native GPU GUIs, AI Code Assistants, and more CRDTs. See also: ⁠Nathan on the Software Unscripted podcast⁠ Discuss this epis…

After 4 years in development, our book is out! Along with our friend and lead-author, Bill Frasure, we we discuss the book, its motivation and the process we used to create it. Now available in digital and print forms at: effectorientedprogramming.com At the end of the episode we step into the "twilight zone" with a 7 minute NotebookLM AI-generated…

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. Mentione…

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 approache…

⁠Stephan Janssen⁠ is always on the bleeding edge of both helping developers grow and with how he uses technology to accomplish amazing things. He led the creation of Devoxx but is a coder at heart. Stephan shares his journey with AI, both as a "library" in his applications and also as an "assistant" that helps him iterate and program more quickly. …

We chat with Venkat about his upcoming dev2next conference and the new Stream Gatherers API (preview in JDK 22). Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

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…

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. Mentioned in podcast James Pearce: x.com/jamespearce + sc…

Johannes Schickling (@schickling | schickling.dev⁠) gets us up-to-speed on Effect, the ZIO-inspired Effect System for TypeScript, and the Local-First movement. Resources: Local-First Podcast: www.localfirst.fm Ink & Switch's Local-First Essay: www.inkandswitch.com/local-first Effect (TypeScript Library): effect.website Riffle research project: riff…

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 so…

Diana Montalion teaches us about Systems Thinking and why it matters for those of us building software. Diana is founder of ⁠Mentrix⁠, which teaches "systems architecture skills for an increasingly complex world." Pre-Order Diana's book: Learning Systems Thinking: Essential Nonlinear Skills and Practices for Software Professionals Discuss this epis…

The guest of this episode is Matt Wonlaw, a prolific local-first tool builder who’s behind projects such as Vlcn, cr-sqlite and Materialite. Most recently Matt also joined Rocicorp to work on their new product. This conversation will go deep on his projects covering CRDTs, SQLite and incremental view maintenance. Mentioned in podcast Matt Wonlaw: x…

We chat with Trond Hjorteland about Agile and why it hasn't led to successful outcomes in many traditional organizations. Mentioned and related resources: Trond & João Rosa's training on Agile + DP2 Open Systems Theory LinkedIn Group for Open Systems Theory More material on Open Systems Theory Resource List from Trond Some of Trond's recorded talks…

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 ap…

The guest of this episode is Pirijan Ketheswaran, the creator of the Kinopio, a playful, canvas-based tool for thought. He is also the co-creator of the online IDE Glitch. This conversation will go trough his journey as a creative including his time at Fog Creek and later building Kinopio as a solo developer. Mentioned in podcast Pirijan Ketheswara…

We chat with Valentina Servile about her upcoming book on Continuous Deployment and reducing the risks to keeping HEAD not just always deployable, but automatically deployed to production. Book for preorder on Amazon: Continuous Deployment: Enable Faster Feedback, Safer Releases, and More Reliable Software Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD…

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 mo…

We chat with Philip Hölzenspies, one of the maintainers of the new Pkl configuration language (pkl-lang.org). Resources: James' Pkl for GitHub Actions: github.com/jamesward/pklgha Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

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 a…

We chat with April Wensel, founder of Compassionate Coding, about helping programmers bring more compassion to themselves and others. Resources: Confessions of a Recovering Jerk Programmer Marshall Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication Kristin Neff - Self-Compassion Karen Armstrong - Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life UC Berkeley Greater Good Scie…

The guest of this episode is Kyle Matthews, who, in the past, founded Gatsby JS and is currently delving into local-first software. In the conversation, Kyle shares his experiences in building some small-scale local-first apps for his personal use and discusses how the utilization of a data syncing engine liberates significant development time. Men…

We chat with Gwen Shapira, co-founder of Nile, about her journey to creating a virtualized, serverless Postgres database service. We also dive into the challenges with traditional data architectures and approaches like ORMs. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

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 …

We chat with Trisha Gee about Test Driven Development (TDD), flaky tests, ops & observability for builds, and developer productivity. Mentioned TDD Article: The beautiful theory of TDD and the reality check of practice Discuss this episode: ⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF

In this episode we talk about Geoffrey's background in malleable software and how relational databases can be leveraged to build better web apps and improve data ownership. A topic he extensively investigates through the Riffle research project. Mentioned in podcast Geoffrey Litt: x.com/geoffreylitt + www.geoffreylitt.com Ink and Switch Cambria (20…

In this episode we talk about Aaron's history in local-first, which goes back to 2008 with the release of Google Gears – the first time sqlite was added to the browser - and his perspective on where we're at now and why local-first is finally happening. Mentioned in podcast: Aaron: x.com/aboodman + aaronboodman.com en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_(soft…

When Gunnar Morling announced the 1 Billion Row Challenge a few weeks ago, he had no idea it'd go crazy viral. Resources: Challenge details: www.morling.dev/blog/one-billion-row-challenge Rust 1BRC Blog: aminediro.com/posts/billion_row/ Cliff Click's implementation walkthrough: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJNIbgV6j-Y James' very slow Scala ZIO implemen…

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 d…

We chat with Adam Warski about Loom, Virtual Threads, and his Loom-based Scala library, Ox, for structured concurrency & Go-Like Channels. Referenced articles & code: Ox EasyRacer Client Go statement considered harmful Go-like selects using jox channels in Java Limits of Loom's performance Fast and Scalable Channels in Kotlin Coroutines Discuss thi…

Announcing Graboo, a collection of experiments to reduce friction with Gradle. Repo: https://github.com/jamesward/graboo Buy your Happy Path Programming Shirt: https://happy-path.printify.me/products Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Most of us have managers but they aren't always great. We chat with James' best manager, Sushila Sahay, about what makes her such a great manager. We also dive a bit into open source business models since Sushila has deep experience in that realm. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We learn about Algebraic Effects with the Scala library Kyo ( getkyo.io) from the creator, Flavio Brasil. Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Arty Starr is a PhD student and entrepreneur focused on helping developers thrive. We chat about her research on developer momentum and ways that developers can find joy through more time in the flow state. Referenced resources: SpringOne Talk Arty's Idea Flow Book FlowInsight Discuss this episode: ⁠https://discord.gg/nPa76qF…

Zalim Bashorov (@bashorov) works on Kotlin/Wasm at JetBrains and answers our many questions about Wasm, GC, the Component Model, and other future proposals. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Sabine went from acedemia and a PhD in formal methods, to Python, Elm, Haskell, and now OCaml. We chat about this journey and some of the reasons why OCaml is an awesome modern language. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Our chat with John De Goes starts with his Scala & Rust journeys, then goes into Golem Cloud, a serverless durable computing platform underpinned by Wasm, and ends with a discussion about whether business applications really need parallelism. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

We chat with Dormain Drewitz about failure and reliability. Ironically our recording software crashed near the end of the episode but we recovered and wrapped things up. Referenced Article: 10 Years of Failure Friday at PagerDuty: Fostering Resilience, Learning and Reliability Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF…

At the Rust Developer Retreat we explored Structured Concurrency with Tokio. With the attendees we chat about our projects and things learned, liked, and disliked about Rust. Then dive into Structured Concurrency generally and specific implementations. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF…

Bruce and James chat about the future of programming. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Michael created Effect, a functional effect system inspired by Scala ZIO, for TypeScript. We chat about Functional Programming, the TypeScript language, and Effects. Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF

Renee Shah is a partner at Amplify Partners, an early stage venture capital firm. We discuss some broad industry trends: Edge, Wasm, Distributed Systems, Functional Programming, and much more! Discuss this episode: https://discord.gg/nPa76qF