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

Hi, I’m Brian. I’m a software engineer currently working at one of the startups in Australia. I write code, solve a lot of problems, and build meaningful products. Outside of work, I enjoy any physical activities like running, hiking, and obviously going to the gym. Apart from that, I also code outside of work. That might sound weird, but coding is my profession and also my hobby.

What hardware do you use?

Currently my main daily driver is Ryzen 5 5600G with 32GB of RAM. It’s a beast, considering my routine tasks. My main monitor is an LG 38” UltraWide together with a Dell 27” 4K vertically sitting on my side. And of course the one and only Moonlander. For my audio, I have Audio-Technica AT2040 dynamic microphone with AKG K52 headphones, both of them hooked to audio interface Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3.

And what software?

My most used software are all related to software development. These include Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Postman, Docker, Vim, Chrome, and other bunches of IDE.

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

I use OG keycaps, they are already awesome. I have my custom layout for a specific purpose. I use navigation a lot when editing code, so my custom layout is designed for coding in mind. I have four layers, which switch by toggle. The first layer is the main one, the second is symbols, the third is navigation (arrows), and the last one is numbers.

I want to explain a bit about my layout: Originally I customized my layout to serve Vim navigation, but with the benefit of the layers, I customized my arrows to separate layers which are similar to the original location of Vim. These allow me to turn Vim on/off when I need to. The reason is that Vim key binding interferes with the IDE default shortcuts, and sometimes I need to use those shortcuts.

What would be your dream setup?

I could say that my current setup is pretty dope. But in the future, if I had a chance I would upgrade my monitor to be 5K2K, which is an LG UltraWide 4K monitor or two of the 27” 4K UltraSharp. The rest I’m already happy with—even when I think that I want them, I don’t need them (which is Mac Pro—that’ll cost you half of the price of the car that you drive).