Alexy Khrabrov talks with Ritchie Vink, founder of Polars, at PyData Amsterdam 2026, Ritchie's home game. They discuss why Polars was written in Rust six years ago and why Rust's compile-time guarantees now make it a strong language for AI-assisted coding; how database research, with lazy evaluation, a query optimizer, a consistent relational data model, and strict column types, shaped Polars in contrast to pandas; Polars as a Python-first library that catches type errors before a query runs; a growing focus on SQL for agents; and the goal of being the fastest engine at any scale, including distributed.