Building a dev experience for Postgres in VS Code with Rob Emanuele

Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

Content provided by Claire Giordano. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Claire Giordano or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

1M ago 1:18:40

MP3•Episode home

What do guitar busking, geospatial queries, and agentic coding have to do with Postgres? In Episode 33 of Talking Postgres, principal engineer Rob Emanuele at Microsoft shares his winding path from Venice Beach to building a new VS Code extension for PostgreSQL—that works with any Postgres, anywhere. We dig into GitHub Copilot, ask vs. agent mode, and how Rob now codes in English—and then spends even more time in code review to decide what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s dangerous. Also: how PyCon changed his life; his work on the Microsoft Planetary Computer with spatio-temporal queries and PostGIS; and how music, improv, and failure shape his approach to developer experience.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Visual Studio Marketplace: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL with ~261K downloads to date
GitHub repo: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL (for issues/discussions)
Docs: GitHub Copilot agent mode
POSETTE 2025 Talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL, by Matt McFarland
VS Code Live: Working with PostgreSQL databases with the Microsoft PostgreSQL VS Code extension, with Olivia Guzzardo & Rob Emanuele
Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
Postgres Meetup for All: VS Code Tools for Postgres, happening on Thu Dec 11, 2025
Wikipedia: Dogfooding
Talking Postgres Ep07: Why people care about PostGIS and Postgres with Paul Ramsey & Regina Obe
POSETTE 2024 keynote: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres, by Regina Obe
Website: Microsoft Planetary Computer
GitHub repo: PgSTAC
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep34 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Dec 10, 2025

35 episodes

#Tech #Postgres #Open Source #Citus #Ari Padilla #PostgreSQL #Database #Communities #Path To Citus