Why 50 Postgres Committers Cannot Keep Up with AI Slop
Craig Kerstiens explains why AI-generated C code threatens Postgres and exhausts the roughly 50 committers who protect core database integrity.
The future is Postgres (Interview)
With Adam Stacoviak, Craig Kerstiens · Sunday, November 1, 2026
Adam Stacoviak sits down with Craig Kerstiens to discuss why Postgres continues to dominate the database landscape through its reliable core and powerful extension ecosystem. They explore how pg_lake integrates DuckDB and Apache Iceberg into Postgres to bridge transactional and analytical workloads, examine major upcoming features in Postgres 19 like concurrent table repacking and query plan pinning, and reflect on the operational pressures placed on the ~50 Postgres committers by AI-generated contributions.
Key takeaways
- Fewer than 100 people contribute directly to core Postgres development, and closer to 50 hold an actual commit bit. Read more →
- Craig Kerstiens warns that the ratio of application developers to database specialists has escalated from 10:1 twenty years ago to 100:1 today, and is approaching 1,000:1. Read more →
- Craig Kerstiens and engineers from Crunchy Data and Snowflake open-sourced pg_lake in November, bundling roughly 12 separate extensions into a single release. Read more →
- Craig Kerstiens calls Postgres 19 the most important release in ten years, comparing its technical weight to the arrival of JSONB in 2014. Read more →
- Postgres functions as an application runtime where extensions like PostGIS, pgvector, and pg_lake replace standalone infrastructure components. Read more →
5 articles from this episode
Software Has 1,000 Developers for Every One DBA
Craig Kerstiens explains why a 1,000-to-1 developer to DBA ratio broke database ops, and why AI agents cannot safely manage your database.
Craig Kerstiens on pg_lake: Embedding DuckDB in Postgres
Craig Kerstiens explains how pg_lake embeds DuckDB and Apache Iceberg into Postgres to query Parquet on S3 with no external pipeline.
Postgres 19 Is the Biggest Release Since JSONB
Craig Kerstiens explains why Postgres 19's native concurrent repack, query plan pinning, and GROUP BY ALL make it a milestone release.
Craig Kerstiens Treats Postgres Like an Operating System
Craig Kerstiens explains why boring Postgres beats specialized databases, how pg_lake brings analytics, and why wire protocol clones fall short.
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