Earlier this year we started a program ("Developer U") to help colleagues who show promise for PostgreSQL Development to become contributors. Because I’m a softie for people’s origin stories, I talked to several of the participants about their motivations, hopes, dreams, and patches.
Mandatory selfie with a FCB banner, while in Barcelona for the kick-off of the Developer U program
First up is Akshay Joshi, a Principal Engineer and Engineering Manager, working on the pgAdmin project, the management tool for PostgreSQL and EPAS. His responsibilities include managing the entire team, overseeing community releases of pgAdmin 4, and handling EDB’s pgAdmin packaging. In addition, he leads the WarehousePG Observability project.
Akshay is based in Pune, India, and speaks English, Hindi, Marathi, C, C++, and PostgreSQL!
A bit of background
Akshay graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and later earned a Master of Computer Applications. He has over 20 years of experience in the software industry, including 15 years with EDB, since joining in 2010. Coding has always been his great passion, Akshay’s fascinated by tech since his college days.
For quite a while, Akshay toyed with the idea of contributing to PostgreSQL development and returning to C programming. He nominated himself for the program and was fortunate enough to be selected.
His work on pgAdmin means Akshay is not new to open source development. He began his journey with pgAdmin III, which was written in C/C++. He witnessed up close the transition from pgAdmin III to the complete rewrite of pgAdmin 4 as a web-based tool built from scratch. "Moving from C/C++ to web development (Python, ReactJS, etc.) was a valuable experience."
Contributing to PostgreSQL
What excites Akshay about the PostgreSQL project is that it’s a powerful, reliable database, trusted globally. "Contributing to it means solving challenging problems while working with a passionate open‑source community. I enjoy the opportunity to code at the core level in C, while also being part of a project that continues to innovate and evolve!"
Akshay went in with the assumption that contributions to a mature project with a big user base like PostgreSQL would be highly formal, rigid, and difficult to get accepted. Instead, he found that the community is very supportive, open to new ideas, and very willing to mentor newcomers, to ensure quality.
Thus far, Akshay worked on the following two features:
pg_get_database_ddl()- a function to reconstruct the CREATE DATABASE statement (commitfest link)pg_get_policy_ddl()- a function to reconstruct the CREATE POLICY statement (commitfest link)
He looks forward to deepening his technical expertise by learning directly from experienced PostgreSQL contributors and exploring areas of the codebase. "I see this program as an opportunity to sharpen not just coding skills, but also communication and review practices!"
Akshay is active on GitHub and LinkedIn, whenever he’s not taking a leisurely, long drive to the beach or to his home town.