Ever wonder how driving a forklift at a cheese factory could lead to a career in databases? Postgres committer David Rowley joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share his story about how he got started as a developer and in Postgres. Could an unexpected job lead to your dream career? Does speeding things up give you a buzz? How could an idea from a hike become a Postgres patch? And what is the importance of doing the research before you submit a proposal to the Postgres mailing list? Also discussed: resources available to start your Postgres journey such as books, blogs, videos, and the pgsql-hackers mailing list.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Wikipedia: Acorn Computers
• PostgreSQL Mailing List Archives: David’s first email: Possible problem with EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM TIMESTAMP)
• Google Usenet: Larry Page’s Java question from Jan 7, 1996
• Blog: Speeding up sort performance in Postgres 15 by David Rowley
• Blog: What’s new in the Postgres 16 query planner / optimizer by David Rowley
• Book: The Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri Fontaine
• Book: The Art of SQL by Stéphane Faroult, Peter Robson
• Book: The Art of Writing Efficient Programs: An advanced programmer's guide to efficient hardware utilization and compiler optimizations using C++ examples by Fedor G. Pikus
• X: Simon Willison’s tweet
• Blog by Tony Finch
• Book: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
• GitHub Issue: Coughing in my microphone causes segfault
• PostgreSQL Mailing Lists: Overview
• PostgreSQL Mailing Lists: pgsql-general
• PostgreSQL Mailing Lists: pgsql-hackers
• Video: Making your patch more committable by Melanie Plageman at PGConf.EU 2023
• Cheese company: Seriously Cheddar
• Talking Postgres Ep04: How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman & Thomas Munro
• Talking Postgres Ep08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki Linnakangas
• Cal invite for next Ep19 of Talking Postgres with Melanie Plageman
• Cal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane