Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:00:02
Hi, I'm Claire Giordano and welcome to Talking Postgres.

SIMON WILLISON: 00:00:06
Biggest thing for me is that I never want to have to solve the same problem twice, ever.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:00:11
It's a podcast about the people who work with the Postgres database and why they do what they do.

DAVID ROWLEY: 00:00:17
I think I get a similar little buzz out of speeding something up in Postgres as I did, maybe like, tuning my motorbike, or something, when I was in my twenties.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:00:25
You'll hear from Postgres people around the world: engineers, contributors, and curious users. And since I'm a bit obsessed with origin stories, we often dig into how people got their start.

TOM LANE: 00:00:38
Loved, and still love pinball, pool, bowling. Anything involving aiming at a target. I'm not any good at those things, mind you, but I love it. I just thought that the coolest job there could possibly be would be to design and build pinball machines for a living.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:00:52
What you'll love about these long form conversations is the backstage glimpse into the experiences of those who make Postgres happen both in the core database and across the broader ecosystem.

PAUL RAMSEY: 00:01:06
By a long shot, by a long shot. And it's an object lesson that everyone starts out writing a simple tool and then ends up writing a GIS. You just can't help it, you just keep adding, and adding, and adding, and before you know it, oh, I accidentally wrote a GIS.

SHIREESH THOTA: 00:01:17
It is open source at its best. I joke with everyone that it's the Linux of databases and it's amazing to have such a community who's very principled and forward looking.

DAWN WAGES: 00:01:28
I think it's really easy to pick up Postgres because there's so many friends around who also use it.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:01:33
Nothing here is scripted. And it's not about speeds and feeds.

MELANIE PLAGEMAN: 00:01:37
Over and over, I chose Postgres because I felt the values of the community, in terms of quality, and what they're trying to do, like, were really consistent with my personal values.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:01:49
It's about learning from the stories and experiences of others.

ROBERT HAAS: 00:01:53
I just love that. Love the intellectual engagement of being able to discuss ideas about interesting topics with a bunch of other people who were really interested in that topic and had really clever things to say about it.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:02:06
A big part of the culture in open source is sharing what you know. So in each episode, guests talk candidly about what they've learned: Failures, wins, obstacles, and all the messy parts in between.

THOMAS MUNRO: 00:02:18
There was a particular moment where we got some coverage and we got a lot of hits and our system completely melted down and we spent a couple of days figuring out what do we need to do to fix this? Like how can we handle more load? And that was kind of the beginning of a study of locking that led me to Postgres.

CLAIRE GIORDANO: 00:02:33
If that sounds like your kind of podcast, check out Talking Postgres and subscribe on TalkingPostgres.com or wherever you get your podcasts.