Episode 449 | Luca Ferrari - Focused Practice

Guest:

Luca Ferrari

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Luca Ferrari talks with Dave Rael about PostgreSQL, learning, writing, archery, language, and opportunity

Luca is a Computer Science passionate since the Commodore 64 era, and today holds a Master Degree (with honor) and a PhD from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He lives in Italy with his beautiful wife Emanuela, their great son Diego, Sofia and Olivia (two female cats) and the last arrived Franzina (a female small-size dog). He has written several research papers, technical articles and book chapters, as well as a book about PostgreSQL titled "PostgreSQL 11 Server Side Programming". He worked as a lecturer for University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, as well as a local high school. In 2011 he was titled Adjunct Professor by University of Nipissing. An avid Unix user, he is a strong advocate of Open Source, and in his free time he collaborates to a few projects. He met PostgreSQL back to release 7.3; he was a founder and former president of the Italian PostgreSQL Users' Group (ITPUG), he talks regularly at technical conferences and events and does professional training. In his day-to-day activity he uses Linux, FreeBSD, PostgreSQL and Emacs. His favourite programming language is Perl (and Raku), but the most of his career has been based in Java and PHP. In his teen-age he has been a quite proficient archer. Archery is something that deeply changed its life, and he finds some similarities between archery and Open Source.

Chapters: 1:22 - Dave introduces the show and Luca Ferrari6:15 - Luca's interest in archery13:18 - The ways archery is like open source16:20 - Working with teammates of varying ages22:03 - Luca's love for PostgreSQL25:51 - Luca, the author30:16 - Luca's story of failure - missing opportunities for impact due to constraints that don't always make sense37:46 - Luca's book recommendations39:31 - Luca on reading and writing in English as an Italian speaker45:07 - Luca's top 3 tips for delivering more value48:23 - Keeping up with Luca

Resources: Luca's Blog Luca on LinkedIn PostgreSQL 11 Server Side Programming Quick Start Guide: Effective database programming and interaction - Luca Ferrari Rambo The Joe Rogan Experience PostgreSQL

Luca's book recommendation: Programming Perl (3rd Edition) - Larry Wall Understanding the Linux Kernel, Third Edition - Daniel P. Bovet

Luca's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Disagree honestly and don't be afraid to say what you think should be said Try to contribute to at least one open source project Mind your time