The people who use our boards.

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

I’m Andrii Serhiienko, and I live in Stockholm, Sweden. I work full-time as a software engineer. Historically, backend is my home: Java, REST APIs, web services, algorithm development, debugging, performance optimization, Perl, C, C++, shell. In recent years, I have also become very comfortable with the frontend: JavaScript, TypeScript, various frameworks.

Years ago, I spent years as a network engineer at ISPs, working with BGP, OSPF, Fibre Channel, and DOCSIS, and building network tools and firmware in Erlang, LISP, and C.

I’ve started a few startups over the years. None have taken off yet, but I keep trying. I believe I'll get there.

Outside of work, I explore languages and technologies. I wrote two books on WebRTC (both published by Packt). Right now, I’m very interested in symbolic logic and AI, reading everything I can find on the subject.

I buy books faster than I can read them, and the wish list grows at rocket speed. I usually have a few going at once—history, history of philosophy, history of AI at the moment. I listen to classical music and buy records on Presto Music.

I lift weights regularly (bench press is the king). I ran three times a week for about a year, but dropped it. Never felt that wave of happiness after a run that people always talk about.

I have an electric guitar I haven’t mastered yet, though I still hold out hope. Same with drawing—I keep making attempts.

And I’m learning Latin at an easy pace. More curiosity than commitment so far, but I might get serious about it—the Loeb library is already in my wish list.

What hardware do you use?

At work, I’m on an HP corporate laptop. At home, my daily driver is a MacBook Pro Max M1. I also have a Lenovo T460 running Linux as a second personal machine. Then there are a MacBook Pro A1278 and a MacBook Pro A1706—both unsupported now by macOS, but I gave them a second life with Ubuntu. I tried NetBSD and FreeBSD on both, but Ubuntu works better on that hardware.

My home display is an ASUS VG27A. At work, it’s probably some Dell—I don’t even remember. Desks are from IKEA. Swedish practical, nothing fancy. The office chair at work is the typical nameless corporate thing; at home I use a Dowinx gaming chair.

For audio, Jabra Evolve2 65 for meetings and Anker soundcore Q30 for music or “sit in silence and focus.”

Before the Voyager, I used an Apple Magic Keyboard for a few years—the best keys I’ve ever worked with. I also tried several split keyboards—the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard, the MoErgo Glove80, a couple of others. Nothing worked more than a few days. The ZSA Voyager is the one that actually hooked me.

And what software?

I work across many languages, so I jump between editors. IntelliJ IDEA for Java. VS Code for C, Perl, C++, JavaScript, and TypeScript. Emacs for LISP. Vim for quick hacks on remote servers. When I’m working remotely, tmux keeps everything sane.

For terminals, I use iTerm2 on the Mac, Kitty in Linux, PuTTY on the corporate Windows laptop.

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

I have the standard Voyager with silent switches. Right now I’m on the default layout—haven’t customized. My approach is to get used to a tool and really feel it before I start customizing. I’m still in that stage. For now it’s about building the muscle memory and figuring out how the same layout works across all the software I run on my Mac, since the Voyager lives at my home desk with the M1.

What would be your dream setup?

A Philips Evnia 49-inch QD-OLED SuperWide. I would swap the IKEA desk for something height-adjustable with more surface area. Upgrade the Dowinx to a proper ergonomic chair. And the big move: a Framework laptop, so I can migrate fully to Linux as my primary system while keeping the M1 around for AI and LLM experiments.