Building a dev experience for Postgres in VS Code with Rob Emanuele | Talking Postgres Ep33
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.Chapters:
⏩ 00:00 Music & introduction
⏩ 01:42 Rob’s origin story, a winding path
⏩ 15:09 60 PB of data, millions & millions of rows
⏩ 18:43 The new VS Code extension for Postgres
⏩ 26:59 Guiding principles
⏩ 27:32 Dogfooding
⏩ 30:28 Recognizing that coding agents…
⏩ 34:02 Let Copilot be a copilot
⏩ 35:52 Using English language to code
⏩ 46:28 PyCon changed everything
⏩ 49:23 Moving the goalposts: ask vs. agent mode
⏩ 56:51 Context engineering
⏩ 1:01:37 Works with any Postgres
⏩ 1:08:19 Music, improv, & engineering creativity
⏩ 1:10:00 Joy in messiness
⏩ 1:12:50 Upcoming Postgres Meetup for All
📜 Full transcript available at:
https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/building-a-dev-experience-for-postgres-in-vs-code-with-rob-emanuele/transcript
✅ Listen to more episodes of Talking Postgres:
https://talkingpostgres.com
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Links mentioned in this episode:
🔹 VS Code extension for PostgreSQL on Visual Studio Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-ossdata.vscode-pgsql
🔹 GitHub repo for VS Code extension for PostgreSQL (for issues/discussions): https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-pgsql
🔹 GitHub Copilot Agent Mode docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/ide/copilot-agent-mode
🔹 Matt McFarland’s POSETTE 2025 Talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL: https://youtu.be/wzyY7GNV7Xo?si=H8CfM7YCnzfdYIzk
🔹 VS Code Live: Working with PostgreSQL databases with the Microsoft PostgreSQL VS Code extension: https://www.youtube.com/live/xRYFKTt-QQc?si=e0Mgb_L6WNYAsAmQ
🔹 Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison: https://youtu.be/8SAqeJHsmRM?si=zXm3i1YR1znKNIPd
🔹 Upcoming virtual talk “VS Code Tools for Postgres” at Postgres Meetup for All on Thu Dec 11, 2025: https://www.meetup.com/postgres-meetup-for-all/events/311005167/
🔹 Wikipedia page for Dogfooding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
🔹 Talking Postgres Ep07: Why people care about PostGIS and Postgres with Paul Ramsey & Regina Obe: https://youtu.be/nVg-z36m_pw?si=ljltvexVHYqp9w4g
🔹 Regina Obe’s POSETTE 2024 keynote: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres: https://youtu.be/gDK5LVrHDJY?si=ciCZpJ-AejHtdSn0
🔹 Microsoft Planetary Computer: https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com/
🔹 GitHub repo for PgSTAC: https://github.com/stac-utils/pgstac
🔹 Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep34 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Dec 10, 2025: https://aka.ms/TalkingPostgres-Ep34-cal
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