how about Escape?

I learned escape as C-[ long ago and never regretted it. Too many keyboards tried to be smart about it.

On, and control next to the a,and caps lock something that requires two people to turn keys at the same time from separate bunkers.

I was really worried about Esc, then I realized, you know, there's gotta be a way to remap the whole touch bar to be Esc.

Remap Caps Lock to Esc?

Where would the ctrl key go?

You can configure caps lock pressed alone to act as escape, but when pressed in combination with other key to work as control. Very useful for both vi and emacs users.

Interesting. How would you configure this on a Mac?

You would install this: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

I use Karabiner and BetterTouchTool in combination

Control + [

Lets talk European keyboards, [ is alt+8. This has been a long running frustration for apps that don't allow remapping but use the US/UK keyboard as standard.

To be more specific, this is true at least on a German QWERTZ layout.

Control + ] or Control + [ is frequently the escape character, although not always. You can usually type it with Control + some key right of P. In the Swedish keyboard, use Control + å, German is Control + ü. But it does vary wildly, French is Control + 6, Hungarian is Control + 5, and so on.

I'm not sure what "European keyboard" you have but mine doesn't work that way. [ is a key on my keyboard I don't need to press any modifiers for.

It's also a bit odd to generalise this to European keyboards as some layouts vary wildly on the continent based on the lack of or added letters to their alphabet. Also, UK is in Europe so would count as a European layout.

For me:

F2 - rename

F4 - jump to the address bar (explorer, elsewhere)

F5 - refresh in the browser, execute/debug in various places

F9 to F12 - Visual Studio debugging and navigation

F11 - full-screen toggle (browser)

When I was SW Dev...my most used Function keys are... F7 - Single step

F8 - Step into

Shift F8 - Step over

F9 - inspect symbol

F10 - execute to cursor

not even F5 to refresh?

Cmd-r

Cmd-Shift-r for me.

To hell with caching!

Just R in Vimperator.