The people who use our boards.

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

Hello, my name is Zach Zambuto, and I am a software engineer based in New England USA. I currently work for a consulting firm where I specialize in building and shipping new modern software products for clients. It’s a great environment for me because I love working with multiple teams and building things. I’ve shipped several web and mobile apps during my time there and have utilized so many different technologies from AWS, TypeScript, React, Angular, and more!

Outside of work, I love experimenting with new technologies. For a while now I’ve been learning game development using the Unity game engine, and it’s been a blast. I think it would be really cool to one day sell a game, but I have a lot to learn! I’ve also been experimenting with Linux. Recently I switched from Windows to Kubuntu for good. It’s been very easy to game on so far!

When someone can drag me away from my computer, I love to play in-person games. On average I’ll play Magic: The Gathering with friends one or two times per week. It’s a great way to get together in person and have some solid entertainment for a few hours.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved cooking. It’s a good break from solving technical problems, but it also scratches that itch to make things. I’ll share a few pictures of things I’ve made I’m pretty proud of.

And finally, I love to travel. I’ve been to dozens of countries and all over my country. Last summer my girlfriend and I spent a week in Italy, half of which was in the Amalfi coast.

One of my favorite places I’ve visited in the United States is Zion National Park in Utah; there’s something so tranquil about the quiet over there and the surrounding deserts. I also really loved being in Ireland—probably because one of my favorite things is a full Irish breakfast, and probably because I’m ¼ Irish.

What hardware do you use?

I cycle between four machines throughout the week for work, leisure, and hobby. At some point I want a more powerful Linux laptop and maybe a home lab for more hobbies.

My gaming and game dev rig has Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060ti, 11th Gen Intel i5-11400F, and 16 GB RAM (I forgot the brand). My work machine is a 2021 16” MacBook Pro, and my personal one is a 2019 16” MacBook Pro. A Dell Latitude 5420 serves as my experimental device.

Then there are my peripherals. My main monitor is a Gigabyte G34WQC A, and my secondary monitor is an ASUS MG278.

My mic is an Audio-Technica condenser microphone, and I also use a Razer BlackShark V2 headset. I use a ZSA Moonlander, a Logitech wireless G502 mouse, and a Wacom drawing tablet.

And what software?

As I’ve said previously, I’ve used Windows extensively for game development but have since switched completely over to Kubuntu. And for work I’m mainly on macOS. I think every developer should have access to all operating systems to do their job effectively. At some point I do want to try more Linux distributions on my experimental laptop.

I’d been using Visual Studio Code for a long time as my IDE of choice. I found myself trying to master keyboard shortcuts and started playing around with Vim motions in VSCode. Unfortunately, at the time I was using this really compact keyboard and I started getting weird forearm pain, so I had to stop for a while. And that’s when I ended up getting my Moonlander, which has enabled me to start using Vim again. I’m in the process of learning Vim and using Neovim as a code editor. It’s so cool to customize and a lot faster to program with. The plan now is to eventually switch over from VSCode and use Neovim full-time. For Neovim and any work that needs to be done in the terminal, I have been utilizing iTerm2 on my Macs and ZSH for my shell.

I’ve always been more of a front-end engineer even though I do full stack, and I think it’s because I can do some design stuff. Anytime I have some idea of app or graphic, I’ll use Figma to get the ideas out of my head. Last year I used it to design a mobile game that all my friends played during New Year’s Eve.

For game development stuff I use Blender for models, Audacity for sound recording, and Krita for any drawing-related stuff that needs to be done.

Honorable mentions go to GitHub, Spotify, Firefox, Proton VPN/Mail, Signal, Matrix (Element), ManaBox (For MTG), and Steam.

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

I’ve been caught at a very transitional stage from keyboard to OS to new code editors! For that reason I’m mostly on the default layout until I really lock in on a good workflow, given all these new tools. I did find it really useful, though, adding a layer for mouse and arrow key control. You can very precisely move around windows and never take your hands off the keyboard.

The ultimate goal, and frankly the reason I got this keyboard, is because I want to be able to be a mouseless developer.

What would be your dream setup?

So far my setup has become closer and closer to what I’ve always wanted. It’s evolved from a flimsy pong table with one monitor to a solid butcher block with professional monitors. I think I definitely need some caster wheels on the standing desk to make modifying it easier. It’s also getting to the point where some of my devices will need to be retired soon. I want a more powerful laptop to replace my 2019 MacBook and eventually a more powerful gaming / game dev workstation. I would also love a home lab so I can do lots of experiments and fully de-Google.

I’m pretty happy with how far my workspace has come and I’m happy that the Moonlander is now a part of it :)