Comment by luckylion
2 days ago
I disagree. Build for your target audience and your targeted application. We don't need for every vehicle to be off-road-capable when you're expecting to deliver cargo on paved roads. We can do that, but it will make things more complex and more expensive.
I'm not saying that nobody should ever consider "the state cuts off the internet" as a criteria when deciding what to do, but making that a foundational requirement is like starting out with "handle google-scale" as a requirement when you have zero reason to believe you will.
There are plenty of good reasons for local first apps, but "build for darkness" is pretty far down the list for me.
In other words: "who's gonna pay for that?".
The sad thing about continuing development of existing technologies is that all reliability, robustness, and multi-purpose capabilities get optimized away over time. In the ideal world, companies wouldn't even sell you hardware or software, they'd just charge for magically doing the one thing you want at the moment, with no generality and no agency on your end.
It's a miracle we still have electric outlets in homes, and not just bunch of hard-wired appliances plugged in by vendor subcontractors.
> In other words: "who's gonna pay for that?".
As opposed to what? Everyone pays the overhead and price of apps designed for things like local-first Bluetooth sync?
This is a situation where the market will prevail and people would go toward (and therefore pay for) apps designed to fit their needs, not apps designed around rare and unusual scenarios.
Build specific tools for specific situations. You won’t get anywhere trying to get all general purpose apps to focus on niche requirements.
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