
Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman
09/20/24 • 82 min
If you could work on anything, would you quit your job to pursue it? Postgres committer and major contributor Melanie Plageman joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share her story about becoming a Postgres committer. Melanie pivoted from IT consulting to open-source development, driven by her fascination with systems engineering and Postgres open source. What’s the secret to getting your patch committed? Feedback is a gift, but how willing are you to embrace it? How important is mentorship—and how important is it to ask for help? Even though crafting clear, concise emails to a technical community might not be easy, Melanie shows how empathy for other Postgres developers can help your work to stand out.
Links discussed in this episode
- Pgsql-hackers mailing list: Announcement about new Postgres committers
- Conference: PGConf.dev 2025
- Blog: Talk, then code by Dave Cheny
- Blog posts about mentoring by Robert Haas
- Blog: Mentoring Program Updates by Robert Haas
- X: Brendan Burn’s tweet about the Kubernetes Chop Wood and Carry Water award
- Award: Chop Wood Carry Water
- Blog: Who Contributed to PostgreSQL Development in 2023? by Robert Haas
- Abstract: What's in a Postgres major release? An analysis of contributions in the v17 timeframe for PGConfEU 2024 by Claire Giordano
- Talking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
- Wikipedia: PostgreSQL Contributor Gifts
- Cal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane to be recorded LIVE on Wed Oct 9, 2024
Podcasts & conference videos that Melanie listens to when running that she recommends to Postgres developers:
- Podcast: Oxide and Friends
- Podcast: postgres.fm
- Podcast: Software Engineering Radio
- Podcast: Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano
- Podcast: Two’s Complement
- SE Radio: Ep 432: Brian D Foy on Perl 7
- Video: Memory & Caches by Matt Godbolt
- Videos: POSETTE 2024 playlist
- Video: RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi Metz
- YouTube: Brandon Foltz
- YouTube: CMU Database Group
- YouTube: Kernel Recipes
- YouTube: Linux Plumbers Conference
- YouTube: Matt Godbolt
- YouTube: Onur Mutlu Lectures
- YouTube: pganalyze
- YouTube: PostgreSQL Development Conference
- YouTube: SNIAVideo
- YouTube: Strange Loop Conference
- YouTube:
If you could work on anything, would you quit your job to pursue it? Postgres committer and major contributor Melanie Plageman joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share her story about becoming a Postgres committer. Melanie pivoted from IT consulting to open-source development, driven by her fascination with systems engineering and Postgres open source. What’s the secret to getting your patch committed? Feedback is a gift, but how willing are you to embrace it? How important is mentorship—and how important is it to ask for help? Even though crafting clear, concise emails to a technical community might not be easy, Melanie shows how empathy for other Postgres developers can help your work to stand out.
Links discussed in this episode
- Pgsql-hackers mailing list: Announcement about new Postgres committers
- Conference: PGConf.dev 2025
- Blog: Talk, then code by Dave Cheny
- Blog posts about mentoring by Robert Haas
- Blog: Mentoring Program Updates by Robert Haas
- X: Brendan Burn’s tweet about the Kubernetes Chop Wood and Carry Water award
- Award: Chop Wood Carry Water
- Blog: Who Contributed to PostgreSQL Development in 2023? by Robert Haas
- Abstract: What's in a Postgres major release? An analysis of contributions in the v17 timeframe for PGConfEU 2024 by Claire Giordano
- Talking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
- Wikipedia: PostgreSQL Contributor Gifts
- Cal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane to be recorded LIVE on Wed Oct 9, 2024
Podcasts & conference videos that Melanie listens to when running that she recommends to Postgres developers:
- Podcast: Oxide and Friends
- Podcast: postgres.fm
- Podcast: Software Engineering Radio
- Podcast: Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano
- Podcast: Two’s Complement
- SE Radio: Ep 432: Brian D Foy on Perl 7
- Video: Memory & Caches by Matt Godbolt
- Videos: POSETTE 2024 playlist
- Video: RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi Metz
- YouTube: Brandon Foltz
- YouTube: CMU Database Group
- YouTube: Kernel Recipes
- YouTube: Linux Plumbers Conference
- YouTube: Matt Godbolt
- YouTube: Onur Mutlu Lectures
- YouTube: pganalyze
- YouTube: PostgreSQL Development Conference
- YouTube: SNIAVideo
- YouTube: Strange Loop Conference
- YouTube:
Previous Episode

How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
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
Next Episode

How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Tom Lane
It was not Tom Lane’s plan to become a computer person. Tom’s plan was to be a pinball machine designer. And yet for the last 26 years Tom has been one of the most prolific engineering contributors to Postgres. In this episode of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, PostgreSQL luminary Tom Lane walks us through how he got his start as a developer and in Postgres—including his time working on desktop calculators at HP. And how he has code running on Mars (and most of us don’t.) During Tom’s PhD studies at Carnegie Mellon, nobody told him databases were so interesting! It wasn’t until Tom needed a database to store stock trading information that he first got to work with Postgres. And that’s when Tom’s 26-year-long (and counting) Postgres story began.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Wikipedia: Tom Lane (computer scientist)
- Wikipedia: HP 9800 series
- CMU CS Department Coke Machine history
- Wikipedia: Honeywell 316
- Wikipedia: Teletype Model 33
- Wikipedia: Hydra (operating system)
- Wikipedia: William Wulf
- Wikipedia: Jon Bentley (computer scientist)
- Wikipedia: Mary Shaw (computer scientist)
- Wikipedia: Usenet
- GitHub: postgres commit by tglsfdc
- Article: The Mars 2020 Engineering Cameras and Microphone on the Perseverance Rover: A Next-Generation Imaging System for Mars Exploration by J.N. Maki et al.
- Blog: Open Source on Mars: Community powers NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter by Klint Finley
- PostgreSQL Mailing List message: pg_upgrade --check fails to warn about abstime
- PostgreSQL: Core Team
- postgresql.git: commitdiff
- Blog: Proton to Fastmail by Tristan Partin
- Talking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a dev (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
- PGConf EU 2024: Conference Schedule
- PGConf NYC 2024: Conference Schedule
- Talking Postgres Ep19: Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman
- PostgreSQL: Commitfests
- Wikipedia: Cutting room floor
- PostgreSQL Mailing List message: Straight-from-the-horses-mouth dept
- PostgreSQL Mailing List message: [PATCH] Extend ALTER OPERATOR to support adding commutator, negator, hashes, and merges
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