Fletcher
25-Minute Talk
PostgreSQL hacking has a steep learning curve: a large and mature codebase, long-running design discussions, and a development culture that can be difficult for newcomers to navigate.
In this talk, I share my experience as a recent newcomer to PostgreSQL development. Over my first several months, I became deeply involved in patch review and development discussions across multiple PostgreSQL subsystems, participating in over 150 commits as an author or reviewer. This provides concrete context for what “ramping up fast” looked like in practice.
While I came to PostgreSQL hacking with prior experience as a professional software engineer, I’ll also discuss which skills transferred well and which PostgreSQL-specific challenges required a different approach.
Rather than presenting this as an achievement story, the talk focuses on the process of learning: the lessons I learned, the mistakes I made early on (both technical and communication-related), what I misunderstood at first, and the concrete workflows and tools that supported that learning.
Topics include:
- How I approached reading PostgreSQL code without deep prior context *How I learned to review patches before fully understanding a subsystem
- Mistakes I made as a newcomer, both technical and communication-related
- Tools and workflows that accelerated learning (debugging, tests, commitfests, mailing lists)
- How feedback from experienced developers shaped my approach
I’ll also discuss what this experience suggests for both aspiring hackers and experienced contributors, including practical ways newcomers can learn more effectively and small changes that can make the onboarding experience smoother.
