How database work pulls you deep into systems engineering (podcast episode with Adam Prout)

If you’re into systems programming, or you’ve ever had to think hard about correctness and failure modes, this might be interesting.

I had Adam Prout (distinguished engineer at Microsoft, founding architect of Azure HorizonDB) on the Talking Postgres podcast to talk about building database systems and trying to make Postgres and Azure fit together cleanly.

Highlights:

• “A good systems programmer tends to mean you’re very paranoid. Anything can go wrong…”
• Shared-storage architecture changes where a lot of the work happens
• With Rust, a large class of bugs just won’t compile
• Working on databases pulls in a surprising amount of computer science
• Startup vs big company tradeoffs show up everywhere

Also this line: “The agents are very fast keyboards.”

Episode (audio + transcript): https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/from-memsql-to-horizondb-an-engineers-journey-with-adam-prout

YouTube (audio): https://youtu.be/dsyWz6tcfh0?si=kTMD1eTamlVneVXN

Curious if you enjoy hearing about other people's engineering journeys, and what bits of Adam's episode you find most fascinating.