Jake Lazaroff
@jakelazaroff.com
nyc-based programmer and designer. alum @recursecenter.bsky.social. public transit enjoyer. thoughts on local-first software, javascript frameworks, web components, css and other web minutiae.
🌐 https://jakelazaroff.com
🌐 https://jakelazaroff.com
Pinned
Jake Lazaroff
@jakelazaroff.com
· Nov 9
jakelazaroff.com
Just a programmer trying to make a home for myself on the WWW.
jakelazaroff.com
hi new friends! i’m jake, a programmer & designer based in NYC. i talk a lot about local-first apps & the web.
if you followed me from a starter pack & don’t know who i am, here are some (imo) cool things i’ve done/written. these are all on my website which you can follow via RSS:
jakelazaroff.com
if you followed me from a starter pack & don’t know who i am, here are some (imo) cool things i’ve done/written. these are all on my website which you can follow via RSS:
jakelazaroff.com
shame i was a few years too young for this band as a kid because this goes insanely hard
I'll Take You Everywhere
YouTube video by Penfold - Topic
www.youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:35 AM
shame i was a few years too young for this band as a kid because this goes insanely hard
i loved to draw as a little kid. i thought i'd illustrate comics. but when i got my first computer i started drawing pictures of programs.
eventually i started trying to make my program pictures real
eventually i started trying to make my program pictures real
November 23, 2025 at 5:16 AM
i loved to draw as a little kid. i thought i'd illustrate comics. but when i got my first computer i started drawing pictures of programs.
eventually i started trying to make my program pictures real
eventually i started trying to make my program pictures real
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
you're telling me a duck typed this code?
November 20, 2025 at 4:53 PM
you're telling me a duck typed this code?
@linknotifier.bsky.social is over a year old! time flies
threw together a lil bluesky bot! if you have your domain name set as your handle, follow @linknotifier.bsky.social and it’ll DM you whenever someone posts a link to it.
bsky.app
November 23, 2025 at 4:21 AM
@linknotifier.bsky.social is over a year old! time flies
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Dearly lacking discourse in local-first... the prerequisites for "data ownership" is it must be freely addressable (e.g. via the file system) and one must be able to adversarially do things with it (e.g. open/ubiquitous formats).
Having data in indexeddb is no more "owned" than having it in an http cache. Both are on your hard drive. Both are obscure formats you can't and won't do anything with. Data ownership requires using open formats. Almost no one doing local-first is even trying to do that.
November 20, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Dearly lacking discourse in local-first... the prerequisites for "data ownership" is it must be freely addressable (e.g. via the file system) and one must be able to adversarially do things with it (e.g. open/ubiquitous formats).
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Very Good Caching needs a better brand. There's a huge performance/UX boost most websites could make just a step beyond SSR vs CSR. But the tech is hidden in this data ownership movement.
Like there is no stage where GitHub improves their client-side cache so much it accidentally turns into Radicle
Like there is no stage where GitHub improves their client-side cache so much it accidentally turns into Radicle
this looks very cool, i mean that genuinely, but tbh i bristle a bit seeing "local-first" used as a straw man here. of course if your server is the source of truth you can eliminate a lot of local-first complexity — the entire point of that complexity is to avoid a server-authoritative architecture!
I've built a new library that provides a local-first like experience but without the complexity. Count Cachula takes a different approach; it uses the Cache API, the stale-while-revalidate pattern, server-sent events and cache tags to give you the same full-sync experience.
November 20, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Very Good Caching needs a better brand. There's a huge performance/UX boost most websites could make just a step beyond SSR vs CSR. But the tech is hidden in this data ownership movement.
Like there is no stage where GitHub improves their client-side cache so much it accidentally turns into Radicle
Like there is no stage where GitHub improves their client-side cache so much it accidentally turns into Radicle
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
It's called Blink because you have 182 copies of it
Is it just me, or is every IDE basically VS Code and every browser basically Chrome?
October 21, 2025 at 8:19 PM
It's called Blink because you have 182 copies of it
this looks very cool, i mean that genuinely, but tbh i bristle a bit seeing "local-first" used as a straw man here. of course if your server is the source of truth you can eliminate a lot of local-first complexity — the entire point of that complexity is to avoid a server-authoritative architecture!
I've built a new library that provides a local-first like experience but without the complexity. Count Cachula takes a different approach; it uses the Cache API, the stale-while-revalidate pattern, server-sent events and cache tags to give you the same full-sync experience.
Count Cachula - Local-first performance without the complexity
Count Cachula - Stale-while-revalidate caching for modern web apps
countcachula.spooky.click
November 18, 2025 at 4:38 AM
this looks very cool, i mean that genuinely, but tbh i bristle a bit seeing "local-first" used as a straw man here. of course if your server is the source of truth you can eliminate a lot of local-first complexity — the entire point of that complexity is to avoid a server-authoritative architecture!
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath
50 reasons to want more walkable cities.
50 reasons to want more walkable cities.
50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets
From making you live longer to making cities more resilient: If you want a reason to make your city more walkable, it's in here.
www.fastcompany.com
November 16, 2025 at 5:40 AM
“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath
50 reasons to want more walkable cities.
50 reasons to want more walkable cities.
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
One more thing. When I wrote about this study showing one-third of Americans don't drive, people were messaging me saying this cannot be true for LA.
In LA County *23 percent* of the population is under 16. Kids are people! We must plan for their movement, just like all nondrivers. Hope that helps!
In LA County *23 percent* of the population is under 16. Kids are people! We must plan for their movement, just like all nondrivers. Hope that helps!
Highly recommend diving into NRDC's study on car access, which @keawilson.bsky.social wrote about here: usa.streetsblog.org/2025/10/02/report-16-million-have-no-car-access-at-all
Where Nadir was killed, 14% of LA households are car-free. But the infrastructure does not match that reality
Where Nadir was killed, 14% of LA households are car-free. But the infrastructure does not match that reality
November 13, 2025 at 5:04 PM
One more thing. When I wrote about this study showing one-third of Americans don't drive, people were messaging me saying this cannot be true for LA.
In LA County *23 percent* of the population is under 16. Kids are people! We must plan for their movement, just like all nondrivers. Hope that helps!
In LA County *23 percent* of the population is under 16. Kids are people! We must plan for their movement, just like all nondrivers. Hope that helps!
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Gecko: Intent to ship: CSS Module Scripts
Gecko: Intent to ship: CSS Module Scripts
Gecko: Intent to ship: CSS Module Scripts
groups.google.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Gecko: Intent to ship: CSS Module Scripts
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Thanks to @jakelazaroff.com, I was able to add this to @bookhive.buzz's login page:
November 13, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Thanks to @jakelazaroff.com, I was able to add this to @bookhive.buzz's login page:
i'll go so far as to say that the PDS as a user-controlled auth/storage layer that clients can connect to directly is the single most important part of atproto. requiring application servers would dramatically increase the cost and difficulty of building atproto apps.
Nerding out about the question of whether the client or the server should be the one who speaks to the PDS
The politics of purely client-side apps
There's a surprisingly nuanced discussion in development about the political economy of clients and servers in the Atmosphere
pfrazee.leaflet.pub
November 13, 2025 at 4:12 AM
i'll go so far as to say that the PDS as a user-controlled auth/storage layer that clients can connect to directly is the single most important part of atproto. requiring application servers would dramatically increase the cost and difficulty of building atproto apps.
interesting article. the flip side is that if LLMs have a 12–18 month lag in their training data, you can get a free year-or-so head start over your peers who rely on them
November 12, 2025 at 10:12 PM
interesting article. the flip side is that if LLMs have a 12–18 month lag in their training data, you can get a free year-or-so head start over your peers who rely on them
amazing! now we just need it in the browser 😈
November 12, 2025 at 6:02 AM
amazing! now we just need it in the browser 😈
building a typeahead web component has convinced me that we need to standardize reference target, like, yesterday
github.com
November 12, 2025 at 3:42 AM
building a typeahead web component has convinced me that we need to standardize reference target, like, yesterday
any a11y folks know how to improve this? is it better to add roles and aria attributes as best i can, or should i wait for actual support for aria across shadow roots?
threw together a lil web component to add this to any input. super easy progressive UX enhancement for your atproto app!
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
November 11, 2025 at 3:24 PM
any a11y folks know how to improve this? is it better to add roles and aria attributes as best i can, or should i wait for actual support for aria across shadow roots?
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Yesterday at TPAC I publicized my draft proposal for adding a declarative templating API to the DOM.
github.com/justinfagnan...
The repo has:
📖 Explainers for the templating API and DOM scheduler API
🏗️ Full prototype implementations
⚗️ a JSX transform
⚛️ a mini React-like framework
github.com/justinfagnan...
The repo has:
📖 Explainers for the templating API and DOM scheduler API
🏗️ Full prototype implementations
⚗️ a JSX transform
⚛️ a mini React-like framework
github.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Yesterday at TPAC I publicized my draft proposal for adding a declarative templating API to the DOM.
github.com/justinfagnan...
The repo has:
📖 Explainers for the templating API and DOM scheduler API
🏗️ Full prototype implementations
⚗️ a JSX transform
⚛️ a mini React-like framework
github.com/justinfagnan...
The repo has:
📖 Explainers for the templating API and DOM scheduler API
🏗️ Full prototype implementations
⚗️ a JSX transform
⚛️ a mini React-like framework
threw together a lil web component to add this to any input. super easy progressive UX enhancement for your atproto app!
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
November 11, 2025 at 3:03 AM
threw together a lil web component to add this to any input. super easy progressive UX enhancement for your atproto app!
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
tangled.org/@jakelazarof...
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Unable to attend this week's awesome-looking @syncconf.bsky.social, I've decided instead to offer a tribute in the only form I know how: a new open source project. 👐
I believe sync is a fundamental part of modern app development. Hopefully I can help make it easier.
Please follow along!
I believe sync is a fundamental part of modern app development. Hopefully I can help make it easier.
Please follow along!
November 10, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Unable to attend this week's awesome-looking @syncconf.bsky.social, I've decided instead to offer a tribute in the only form I know how: a new open source project. 👐
I believe sync is a fundamental part of modern app development. Hopefully I can help make it easier.
Please follow along!
I believe sync is a fundamental part of modern app development. Hopefully I can help make it easier.
Please follow along!
i find most same-genre and adjacent-genre covers boring but the djenty guitar work here is really fun!
That's What You Get
YouTube video by Cartographer - Topic
youtu.be
November 10, 2025 at 3:29 AM
i find most same-genre and adjacent-genre covers boring but the djenty guitar work here is really fun!
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
Most people see the web as a glorified document viewer, I look it as a malleable computing substrate that has yet to be fully actualized.
November 10, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Most people see the web as a glorified document viewer, I look it as a malleable computing substrate that has yet to be fully actualized.
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
November 9, 2025 at 12:10 AM
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
ruth fertel in 1965:
November 7, 2025 at 9:06 PM
ruth fertel in 1965:
Reposted by Jake Lazaroff
The New York Times opinion page isn't holding anything back now smh.
November 6, 2025 at 6:32 PM
The New York Times opinion page isn't holding anything back now smh.