Becoming expert at using PostgreSQL with Chris Ellis

Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

You have to find what works for you and Chris Ellis has never been the kind of person that could go and sit in a library—for Chris, the most productive Postgres place is in a coffee shop. In this episode of the Path To Citus Con* podcast for developers who love Postgres, Chris Ellis joined Claire and Pino to chat about his path to becoming more (and more) expert at using PostgreSQL. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it’s taken Chris places, beginning as a 5 year old playing with QBASIC. Chris shared his journey to becoming a developer, an electronic engineer, a builder, and a PostgreSQL user. This session also delves into Chris’s work as a Postgres conference speaker (and organizer!) Importantly, we spent time remembering Simon Riggs, Postgres leader extraordinaire. RIP.

*[Update: July 2024] Path To Citus Con has been renamed to Talking Postgres. All of the past podcast episodes from Path To Citus Con—now called Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano—can be found here: https://talkingpostgres.com

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Chris's first thread on the PostgreSQL mailing lists
• Slides: IoT with PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at PGConf.EU 2023
• Slides: Advantage PostgreSQL—by Chris Ellis at Nordic PGDay 2024
• Video: Should I use JSON in PostgreSQL?—by Boriss Mejías at PGConf.EU 2023
• Slides: Fighting the Butterflies & giving your first Postgres conference talk—by Claire Giordano at pgDay Paris 2024
• Markus Winand's website, Modern SQL
• Wikipedia: Linus’s law
• Andres Freund’s xz backdoor discovery
• Andres Freund’s Mastodon Toot about xz backdoor
• Podcast: Path to Citus Con Ep08: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki Linnakangas
• Podcast: Path To Citus Con Ep11: My Journey into Performance Benchmarking with Jelte Fennema-Nio & Marco Slot
• Podcast: Oxide and Friends next episode on Mon Apr 08 2024, featuring Andres Freund from Microsoft
• Jessie Frazelle tweet on LLM
• Video of pgDay Paris 2024 lightning talks, including Chris's "Electric Elephants" talk
• Post about Simon Riggs's tragic passing last week. He will be missed, he is missed, and many are heartbroken
• Simon Riggs: The Next 20 Years—keynote at PGConf.EU 2023
• Book: The Art of PostgreSQL by Dimitri Fontaine
• Podcast: Path To Citus Con Ep09: Solving every data problem in SQL w/Dimitri Fontaine & Vik Fearing
• Blog: Planet PostgreSQL
• Blog: Contributing to Postgres 101: A Beginner's Experience by Elizabeth Christensen
• Book: Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love
• Chris Ellis’s LED PCB Art
• Blog: pgDay Paris – Postgres Community, cheese and wine by Boriss Mejías
• Podcast: LUG Radio
• CFP for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres (free & virtual event) open until Sunday April 7th 2024 at 11:59pm PDT
• Cal invite for next Ep15 of Path To Citus Con podcast with Michael Christofides