So, what’s the significance of sync engines? I have a theory that every major technology shift happened when one part of the stack collapsed with another. For example:
- Web apps collapsed cross-platform development. Instead of developing two or three versions of your app, you now develop one, available everywhere!
- Node.js collapsed client and server development. You get one language instead of two! You can share code between them!
- Docker collapsed the distinction between dev and prod.
- React collapsed HTML and JS, Tailwind collapsed JS and CSS.
So where does that leave sync engines? They collapse the database and the server. If your database is smart enough and capable enough, why would you even need a server? Hosted database saves you from the horrors of hosting and lets your data flow freely to the frontend.
- Conceptual compression is a big deal. Even discounting for uneven distribution of technological shifts, like Docker dev environments and collapsing client/server, HTML, and CSS all into JS.
- Sync and local-first storage engines seem like they could be a big deal. It’s a tricky problem to solve. And, governments taking a turn for the weird lately, being able to move your data to another locality and point, with certainty at where data rests, is a useful ability!