I’ve been working on https://with.audio which is a local app.

I think there should be way more local apps with sync capabilities. I haven’t finished the sync feature in WithAudio and you have very nice ideas there. Specially the eventual consistency. That’s what will work.

But I must say for sure the most difficult part of local apps is debugging customer issues. For someone who is used to logs and traces and metrics and most of users using a one version of the code in the backend, debugging an issue in customers computer on an old version without much insight (without destroying all your premises of privacy) is very challenging.

i recently discussed the development of a new application for a customer. one of the important aspects was that the app would handle data that would have to stay local. despite that my thinking went like this:

if i develop it as a webapplication, then i can do all the work on my computer, test with various browsers and deliver a working result. if the customer has issues, i can likely reproduce them on my machine.

but if it was a desktop application, my feeling was that testing would be a nightmare. i would have to set up a machine like my client, or worse visit the client and work with them directly, because my own machine is just to different from what the client uses. also not to forget distribution and updates

in short: web -> easy. desktop -> difficult.