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

Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

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