Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Tobias Hieta from Gävle Sweden. I am one of those people that wear many hats. I am working as the team lead for build systems and toolchain at Plex, where I also work with operational security. In my spare time (haha) I am one of the co-hosts of kodsnack, Sweden’s biggest podcast for developers by developers (at one point we even interviewed Erez himself).

At Plex I run and maintain our Jenkins and Artifactory installations and help all developers improve their workflow and deployment. I also maintain our Clang based toolchain. If you are interested in the challenges of maintaining a large C++ code base and ship it to millions of users I have some resources for you.

What hardware do you use?

I have a lot of hardware. We ship our application on many different platforms so it requires me to have access to fast hardware of all types. I build and rebuild our application several times a day and it takes around two hours with all dependencies, even on the fast hardware I have.

My main Windows/Linux machine is:

• Threadripper 1950x 16 Cores/32 Threads
• 64GB of RAM
• RAID-0 Samsung EVO-970 m.2 SSDs
• Kraken X62 AIO cooler
• MSI GeForce 1080 TI (yeah — I am a gamer as well)

My macOS hardware is an old hand-me-down 2013 Mac Pro aka a trashcan.

• Xeon E5-2697v2 12 Cores/24 Threads
• 32GB of RAM
• 1TB m.2 SSD
• Dual AMD FirePro D700

I also rock a Razer Blade 2018 laptop as a mobile setup.

• Intel Core i7 8750H with 6 Cores / 12 Threads
• 16GB of RAM
• 512GB m.2 SSD
• GeForce 1070 MaxQ

All these machines are connected to a Acer X32P Ultra-Wide monitor. My mouse is a Razer Mamba Wireless and I am using a Razer Tartarus v2 macro keyboard for gaming and quick access macros to media playback and app launching. To switch between my Mac Pro and my PC machine I use an ATEN CS782DP Display-Port KVM.

In my picture you can also see the Hyper-X QuadCast that I use to record my podcast and for gaming.

And what software?

I am running Arch Linux, Windows 10 and macOS 10.14 on my machines above. I am most comfortable in Linux and macOS but get around decently in Windows with cmder and WSL as well.

My text editor of choice these days is Visual Studio Code. I write a lot of C++, Groovy, CMake and Python. VS Code handles them all just fine and allows me to do everything in the same editor.

The Plex toolchain is based on LLVM Clang compiler, crosstool-ng toolchain builder, CMake and Conan C++ Package Manager. All great software that makes the world turn.

These days I really enjoy Firefox as my browser. I switched around the Quantum update and have been very happy since then (Ed note: Firefox rules).

Other indispensable software for me is: 1Password, Slack and Discord.

I guess games are software as well, in that case my favorites are “looter shooter” like Destiny 2, The Division 2 and Anthem. But you can almost never go wrong with some awesome story-heavy indie games like GRIS and Life is Strange.

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

I have an Ergodox EZ with blank keycaps and Cherry MX Blue switches. I work from home so nobody cares that it sounds loud, and I really love it.

I am using a highly custom keymap that is based on Programmer Dvorak. I have been using a Swedish variant of Dvorak for over 10 years now - but recently switched to the programmer variant where the numerics and the common programming characters like {}()[]!# are front instead of hidden behind any modifiers. This works very well for me and I would recommend any programmer to try it out. My current firmware is over at my GitHub page.

What would be your dream setup?

I think I would like to find the holy grail of computer monitors with a Ultra-Wide 4K Retina display that can run in 144Hz (this is not on the consumer market as of right now). I also wish there was a way to bring my ErgoDox EZ setup with me on the go in a compact nice way (Looking forward to that Planck EZ for sure!). Mobile setup overall needs more cores to do my work well, but laptops are already very expensive and hard to get good performance out of. Next on my list of upgrades is a new chair as well! Looking longingly at chairs that are way too expensive unfortunately.