
Turing Award Winner: Postgres, Disagreeing with Google, Future Problems | Mike Stonebraker
From The Peterman Pod by Ryan Peterman
April 20, 2026 ยท 57 min
About this episode
Mike Stonebraker discusses his contributions to database technologies, his disagreements with Google and Amazon, and his current projects.
Mike Stonebraker is a Turing Award winner famous for his contributions to fundamental database technologies. We discussed the story behind building Postgres, where he disagrees with Google/Amazon on databases, and what he's working on now. ๐ธ My keyboard Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done ๐ฃ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐๐ ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ธ๐: โข YouTube: https://youtu.be/YPObBOwIrHk โข Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 โข Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-postgres-disagreeing ๐๐ฝ๐ถ๐๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ธ๐: โข Red book of database readings: http://www.redbook.io/ โข BEAVER: An Enterprise Benchmark for Text-to-SQL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02038 ๐ง๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ๐๐๐ฎ๐บ๐ฝ๐: 0:00 - Intro 1:03 - How he got into databases 6:43 - Competing with Oracle 9:07 - What made Postgres special 15:55 - One size fits none 21:37 - Why he disagreed with Google 29:14 - Why he chose academia over big tech 30:58 - Replacing state in an OS with a DB 42:02 - Future problems in databases 51:36 - Technical book recommendations to learn databases 52:20 - Advice for younger self 55:52 - Outro ๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ผโฆ
People in this episode
Host: Ryan Peterman
Guest: Mike Stonebraker
Topics covered
- database technologies
- Postgres
- Amazon
- future problems
- academic vs big tech
Keywords
- Turing Award
- Postgres
- database technologies
- Amazon
- future problems
- academic career
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Google, Amazon, DBOS
Products: Postgres, Red book of database readings, BEAVER
Books & works: Turing Award
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