Author

Jake Lazaroff

@jakelazaroff.com

nyc-based programmer and designer. alum @recurse.com. azzajew. public transit enjoyer. thoughts on local-first software, atproto, javascript frameworks, web components, css and other web minutiae. 🌐 https://jakelazaroff.com

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Jake LazaroffMar 31, 2026

Building More Resilient Local-First Software with atproto

atproto has the potential to become a rock-solid replacement for the most fragile part of any local-first app: the sync server.

atprotocrdts

Jake LazaroffOct 2, 2025

DHH Is Way Worse Than I Thought

DHH's politics are not normal. Maybe they used to be, I don't know, but as of right now the dude is way outside of what most people would consider moral or acceptable.

politicstech

Jake LazaroffJun 17, 2025

Homomorphically Encrypting CRDTs

Homomorphic encryption allows a computer to run programs on encrypted data. Learn how homomorphic encryption works through interactive examples, build a homomorphically encrypted CRDT and see whether it has promise for local-first software.

crdtslocalfirst

Jake LazaroffDec 11, 2024

Isomorphic Web Components

The lack of server-side rendering in web components has become a sort of folk belief that oft goes unquestioned. I am happy to report that the fears are unfounded.

webcomponents

Jake LazaroffNov 22, 2024

Drinking from the Bluesky Firehose

I recently built a Bluesky bot. To build it, I had to dig into the Bluesky firehose. Here's what I learned.

atprotobluesky

Jake LazaroffNov 5, 2024

What's a Single-Page App?

The web development community talks a lot about single-page apps, but are we all on a single page? Here's my ontology of web app architectures, organized by rendering and navigation.

htmljavascript

Jake LazaroffOct 29, 2024

My Modern CSS Reset

A CSS reset I've been using for new projects.

css

Jake LazaroffOct 7, 2024

Building a Single-Page App with htmx

People talk about htmx as though it's saving the web from single-page apps. Well, I guess I missed the memo, because I used htmx to build a single-page app.

htmxjavascript

Jake LazaroffOct 1, 2024

A Local-First Case Study

How I built a local-first app for planning trips, and what I learned about the current state of the local-first ecosystem along the way.

crdtslocalfirst

Jake LazaroffJan 29, 2024

The Web Component Success Story

Web components won't take web development by storm, or show us the One True Way to build websites. What they will do is let us collectively build a rich ecosystem of dynamic components that work with any web stack.

javascriptwebcomponents

Jake LazaroffJan 3, 2024

The Website vs. Web App Dichotomy Doesn't Exist

A one-dimensional spectrum can't sufficiently capture the tradeoffs involved in web development.

csshtml

Jake LazaroffNov 27, 2023

Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-in

Web components can dramatically loosen the coupling of JavaScript frameworks. To prove it, we're going to do something kinda crazy: build an app where every single component is written in a different JavaScript framework.

javascriptreact