CEO of @rocicorp. Building @replicache and https://t.co/FPjJ2whtAG, raising two great kids, and trying to be a better person. Also found at https://t.co/4ARrglK8Kc.
Oct 6 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
@jamespearce I should do a video on this or something. So many questions, continuously. 😅
@jamespearce Eh, I'm too lazy / busy to do this but open offer to anyone who does tech podcasts to come on and talk about the landscape as I see it.
Mar 8, 2023 • 21 tweets • 5 min read
Gears was um ... not met with enthusiasm by the browser community. Web dev reactions ran the gamut, some were excited somebody was finally doing something, others were concerned about introduction of non-standard APIs.
2008: Chrome launches, with Gears built-in.
2009: Hixie (who edits the HTML spec and sits down the hall from me) drafts the WebSQL spec. His argument is that browsers are going to start shipping this, so somebody should document it quick for interop. Chrome and Safari ship it.
Mar 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A long, tragic history of SQLite, the web, and my career.
Before diving in, disclaimer: I'm not drawing any conclusions or placing blame here. Just documenting this crazy tale as best I can remember it.
I am probably remembering some parts wrong.
June 2000: I publish my first OSS JS lib
August 2000: SQLite 1.0
December 2004: I join Google
Jan 2005: I recruit @ErikArvidsson and other JS friends
~2006: Erik and I join the Gears project.
sunday webdev challenge: can you think of a way to test network connectivity that *does not* print an error to dev tools?
For Replicache we want to periodically test connectivity while offline. It's *not* an error for us to be offline, so don't want to spam console though.
*saturday.
Jan 1, 2023 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Aaron's tips for skiing with kids.
My kids are 6 and 8. I've loved skiing and snowboarding since I was their age. I waited their whole lives to start teaching them. I also taught my nieces (now college-age) to ski.
Here's what I've learned 🤷♂️: 1/?
1/ First, why even do this? Teaching young kids to ski is super worthwhile IMO because it's one of the most accessible adventures available. By adventure, I mean it is something very foreign to the everyday experience of most kids: cold, snowy, fast, physical, dangerous feeling…
May 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A sort of bittersweet thought that pops into my head every so often:
I think we are living in a sort of golden age for software development. Similar to the 1980s for cinema or early 1900s for some kinds of american craftsmanship, or the renaissance for science and art.
I think there's an implicit assumption in our work that there is proportionate value, in chasing better and better experiences. We dump really obscene amounts of money and energy into polishing every interaction.
May 10, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Little story about "ajax", aka `XMLHttpRequest`, aka `fetch`...
Not sure how many people know this but XHR was actually ignored for the first many years of its existence.
It was entirely possible to build ajax apps starting in ~1999, but .... nobody did.
There were a few mavericks of course: Oddpost was an epic email app, then Microsoft OWA. But mostly people just kept building slow apps with full reloads.
Five *years* after XHR was introduced, Google picked it up and showed what was possible: gmail (2004), maps (2005).
Dec 30, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Sneak preview: Replicache running at 60FPS.
This video is not sped up. The clients are in Hawaii and the server is a Heroku standard-0 dyno backed by Postgres running in Virgina. The ping time is 120ms and the end to end latency through the Replicache server is ~150ms.
Dec 10, 2021 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
DAOs, like Smart Contracts, are misnamed.
They are neither decentralized (typically) nor entirely autonomous. It's super frustrating to watch the Twitterverse arguing back and forth based on this misunderstanding so ima just spell it out here (🧵)...
The "organization" bit is key: people are using DAOs to experiment with how to organize.
DAOs compete with non-profits, LLCs, and corps. They are fringe and only used for weird crypto things,, but will become more popular. Starting at the edge and over time toward mainstream.
Aug 16, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all. The team came in at 9 and left at 5 (figuratively, people actually kept their own ~8h schedules) every workday for a couple years like clockwork. No drama. No broken marriages, no broken families.
It was one of the most formative experiences of my career.
Jul 1, 2021 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
People frequently ask us what the difference between Web Sockets and @replicache is. It's a totally reasonable question if you've never tried to implement something like multiplayer or offline sync before.
Another variant: what's the difference between Replicache and Firebase?
Simplifying, web sockets (or Firebase) are a way to send data from clients to servers and back fast -- "in realtime". If what you're trying to build is "realtime collaboration", it's reasonable to wonder if WS gives you everything you need.
Feb 5, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One thing people told me when I was building @attic, but which I didn't really internalize until recently:
Business happens at the point where a new idea meets the existing world. A new idea by itself can't be used by many because precisely because it's too different.
You have to provide the connection back to the current world for it to be useful - literally for people to be able to use it.
This connection can't be an afterthought. It has to be as carefully designed as the core idea. It's the thing your customers will touch.
