Just for the record, I use vim all the time on the new MBP and don't have any issues. I remapped Esc in vim ages ago, though. vim was not designed around the current placement of the Esc key.

What do you use in its stead?

For the past year or so I've been using the key sequence "fd", which I discovered from spacemacs. (I've actually copied a lot of spacemacs keybindings because I found them very ergonomic.)

Great tip! I've installed evil-escape in my emacs and now have the same binding. Quite useful.

Popularity isn't really a good argument.

It could either be because it's a good way to edit text, or because of inertia and extreme conservative nature of developers.

I made no claim about popularity. I did make a claim about productivity. Big difference.

> Why do you think so many IDEs come with vim emulation

I was referring to the claim that a popular choice amongst IDE makers meant it was a good idea.

Ctrl-C is equivalent to pressing Esc in Vim and you don't have to move your hand so much.

Ctrl is one of the keys that vim specifically tries to avoid.

Certainly by having modes vim has great keyboard shortcuts and avoid having to press combination of keys. However, for redo you have to press Ctrl+R, so that would indicate that Ctrl is not forbidden in vim. In this particular case, I find more confortable to move a little my fingers to press Ctrl+C than having to move my whole hand to the upper top of the keyboard to press esc. Also, it is nice that this shortcut works everywhere without having to remap your Donglebook.