They implemented ideas from a VectorWise paper. It's very good for an intern, but it's not original work.

(Ozgun from Citus Data here.)

I updated the Readme, and added a second link to the original vectorization paper. We found that most benefits came from simply switching to batch-processing; and that's why we referenced the more recent "vectorization vs LLVM" paper.

I'd say the original part of Can's work is that new ideas can be applied to PostgreSQL's robust and optimized executor, without touching any core logic. In that sense, it could also be relevant to this earlier thread on cstore: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524886

For clarification, it wasn't anyone from our team who downvoted any of these threads.

All we can do on our part is to keep working on PostgreSQL to make it even better and faster, and to share our work with others in the community.

This was my feeling, as well.

Interns are great. Some of them are PhD candidates or even post-docs. Just because they are looking for short-term employment doesn't make them underqualified. They also lack any responsibilities that are heaped on full-time engineers, like managing or mentoring junior engineers (and interns), attending meetings, etc. They focus on their projects.

Also, it's easier for them to get more speculative work because the cost of failure is lower.