Postgres Before PostgreSQL: Stories from Inside the Original Berkeley Lab
October 20–23
If you are new to PostgreSQL, you have probably already asked it: why does it work like this? Why does vacuum exist? Why does autovacuum run in the background? Why do parts of PostgreSQL feel designed for a different era?
They were. And I found out why.
In January 2026, I sat down with Greg Kemnitz and Curt Kolovson — two engineers who built the original Postgres at Berkeley in the late 1980s under Professor Michael Stonebraker. Presented in documentary style, this talk brings their answers directly to you.
Vacuum was never designed for MVCC — it was built for optical storage that barely exists anymore. The no-overwrite storage model was a workaround for 1986 hardware constraints. Lisp was chosen for the query optimizer because it was the hot language of the moment, then spent a year being removed because the bugs were unmanageable. The early mascot was a turtle. Because the database was that slow.
These aren't just good stories. They are the answer to the question every PostgreSQL beginner eventually asks — told by the people who were actually there.
You will leave with the human reasoning behind PostgreSQL's most foundational decisions, and a completely different way of understanding the database you are learning.
