In 2009, I graduated from university and landed my first full-time job as a Java developer. Our team chose Postgres for a high-load web application I had yet to build. In those days, Postgres lacked many features, and few people considered using it. Still, we placed our trust in it, and since then it has never let me down.
Over the years, I changed jobs and companies, but Postgres remained my default database. I continued learning it gradually while using it on various projects, although I mostly saw it as a relational database for transactional workloads.
In early 2022, I joined the Yugabyte team, which builds a distributed version of Postgres. That’s when I discovered a different Postgres: one that supports full-text search, powers geospatial applications, and enables generative AI. I realized Postgres could do much more than I had expected from it as a relational database.
I rediscovered Postgres by reading countless blog posts, watching endless videos, and having many conversations with community members. At some point, I asked myself why there wasn’t a book to introduce the breadth and depth of Postgres capabilities. It felt strange that such a book didn’t exist, given the database’s growing popularity. Eventually, I decided to contribute to Postgres by writing that book myself.