Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

Hi, my name is Accel Maeshiro, and I’m a backend developer at Kambista, known as the first digital currency exchange company in Peru. I like coding and constantly improving my skills.

After spending long hours coding, I started to feel the pain and began to notice how much my keyboard setup mattered. That led me into a deep dive into keyboards, and after all the research, I was convinced that the Voyager was the perfect one for me.

As soon as it arrived, I switched my layout to Colemak, just as I’d planned. It’s been a long journey, almost six months now, and although I’m not as fast as I’d like to be yet, I’ve reached 60 WPM, which feels great. Seeing that progress keeps me motivated.

I used to work with Neovim, but Colemak felt a little awkward with it, which discouraged me for a while. Still, I want to get back into it. There’s something deeply satisfying about refining both my tools and my workflow.

Outside of work. I like the Hindu philosophy. I practice it with devotion. I like to think about existence and what we are all doing here, living and dying. I like to do exercise and read books— I don’t go out as much—and I constantly try each day to keep my phone and distracting content from winning over myself.

What hardware do you use?

My hardware setup is my pride and joy to be honest haha. My absolute favorite piece is my Apple Studio Display, I’m proud to own it.

My main machine is an M3 Pro MacBook, and I sit in a Razer Iskur V2 chair, which is very comfortable. I alternate between AirPods Pro and Apple AirPods Max, depending on my need. When I first bought the Voyager, I saw a YouTuber pairing it with the Magic Trackpad and I knew this was the way, an amazing idea. It’s such a smooth combo.

I honestly love my entire setup. Now it’s just about putting in the hours to match the skills I’m aiming for.

And what software?

On the software side, I mostly use Visual Studio Code, Mongo Compass, Postman, Firefox, GPT, Claude, Raycast, and Maccy. On the terminal, I use Alacritty, Neovim, zoxide, fzf, eza, pnpM, among others.

In my projects, I always try to follow Clean Architecture principles and write Clean Code; that’s what I enjoy the most. I love finding ways to make complex ideas simple, elegant, and readable. I like that there is another backend on my team who I can constantly talk to, share programming knowledge with, and think with together about the solution to a task.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

Getting started with the ZSA Voyager configuration was tough at first. I’ve already gone through 142 revisions, small tweaks, improvements, and experiments. I’ve checked out other people’s layouts, but none of them felt quite right. I’ve learned that every person’s workflow is unique. For me, speed is crucial, so I don’t use home-row mods. Discovering the power of thumb keys was amazing, they make everything more natural.

If I could change just one thing about the Voyager, though, I’d add one more key per thumb cluster. Right now, it has only two per side, and with three, it would be absolute perfection. Many of the workarounds I’ve created would disappear instantly. But I’m still hopeful, haha.

What would be your dream setup?

As for my dream setup, honestly, I think I already have it.