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

From Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano by Microsoft

November 7, 2025 · 1h 19m · Episode 33

About this episode

Rob Emanuele discusses his journey and the development of a new VS Code extension for PostgreSQL.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Claire Giordano

Guest: Rob Emanuele

Topics covered

Postgres
VS Code
developer experience
geospatial queries
AI in coding
GitHub Copilot
music and coding

Keywords

Postgres
VS Code
GitHub Copilot
geospatial queries
developer experience
coding
PyCon

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Microsoft, Microsoft Planetary Computer

Products: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL

Books & works: GitHub Copilot

Places: Venice Beach, PostGIS