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 seriesCMU CS Department Coke Machine historyWikipedia: Honeywell 316Wikipedia: Teletype Model 33Wikipedia: Hydra (operating system)Wikipedia: William WulfWikipedia: Jon Bentley (computer scientist)Wikipedia: Mary Shaw (computer scientist)Wikipedia: UsenetGitHub: postgres commit by tglsfdcArticle: 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 FinleyPostgreSQL Mailing List message: pg_upgrade --check fails to warn about abstimePostgreSQL: Core Teampostgresql.git: commitdiffBlog: Proton to Fastmail by Tristan PartinTalking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a dev (& in Postgres) with David RowleyPGConf EU 2024: Conference SchedulePGConf NYC 2024: Conference ScheduleTalking Postgres Ep19: Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie PlagemanPostgreSQL: CommitfestsWikipedia: Cutting room floorPostgreSQL Mailing List message: Straight-from-the-horses-mouth deptPostgreSQL Mailing List message: [PATCH] Extend ALTER OPERATOR to support adding commutator, negator, hashes, and merges