Are self-driving databases the Waymos of the future? In Episode 35 of Talking Postgres, Luigi Nardi—founder and CEO of DBtune and Stanford researcher—joins Claire Giordano to explore his journey from academic research to Level 5 autonomous database tuning. We dig into Luigi’s early days with a Commodore 64, how he began his PhD in Paris before he had learned to speak French, and how "professor privilege" in Sweden helped him bootstrap his startup. You’ll learn why the DBtune team chose database tuning and Postgres as their focus, what the Jevons paradox means for the future of developers, and how the “Level 5” vision fuels the DBtune team’s work toward a truly self-driving system.

Previously on Talking Postgres:

• Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
• Talking Postgres Ep23: How I got started as a developer & in Postgres with Daniel Gustafsson

Links mentioned in this episode:

• CFP: POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026’s CFP closes on Sun Feb 1, 2026 @ 11:59pm PST
• Video of POSETTE 2024 talk: Autotuning PostgreSQL on Azure Flexible Server, by Luigi Nardi
• Video of PGConf India 2025 talk: ML for Systems and Systems for ML, by Luigi Nardi
• PGConf India 2025: Round Table Discussion about AI
• Oxide and Friends podcast: Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
• Wikipedia: Jevons paradox
• Wikipedia: Neuro-symbolic AI
• Conference: PGDay Lowlands (Boriss Mejías calls it the second-best Postgres conference in Europe)
• Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep36 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Feb 18, 2026

What do conference planning, hacking weddings, and cat-free coding sessions have to do with Postgres? In Episode 34 of Talking Postgres, Melanie Plageman—Postgres committer and major contributor from Microsoft—joins Claire for a lively deep dive into what developers can expect at PGConf.dev 2026 as Postgres turns 30. We explore new content formats, the role of travel grants, why Tuesday becomes a full conference day, and how the hallway track often shapes the next Postgres release. Plus: creating space for new contributors to get inspired and get involved. And yes—the CFP is open until Jan 16, 2026.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Podcast: Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman
• Podcast: How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman & Thomas Munro
• Conference: PGConf.dev 2026
• CFP for PGConf.dev: CFP will close on Jan 16, 2026
• PGConf.dev 2026: About
• PGConf.dev 2026: Sponsorship levels
• PGConf.dev 2026: Travel grant program
• Social: LinkedIn account for PGConf.dev
• POSETTE: An Event for Postgres: POSETTE CFP is open until Feb 1, 2026
• Meetup: Post about inaugural PostgreSQL Nairobi Meetup in Dec 2025
• PGDay Lowlands 2025: Debate on Kubernetes, session details
• PGDay Lowlands 2025: Debate about autotuning, session details
• Conference talk at PGCon 2019: Intro to Postgres Planner Hacking, by Melanie Plageman
• Blog post: The Pac-Man Rule at Conferences, by Eric Holsher
• Discord invite for PostgreSQL Hacking Mentoring server: https://discord.gg/bx2G9KWyrY
• Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep35 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Jan 14, 2026

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