I think the new design/specs were polarizing enough to dissuade many devs (at least in my circle) from even bothering to upgrade.

But those who were polarized in the positive direction probably got it and do love it.

I use a 5yo MBP with 16G RAM; the idea of dropping 4 grand on a laptop that will still be capped at 16G 5 years from now is laughable.

This is the single reason why I am waiting for next update. Which should give us the option of 32GB with LDDR4 (or whatever low power memory they are waiting for). This is possible because laptop speed doesn't really increase as much with each revision anymore.

It is, but most people who'd buy the laptop will be just fine with 16GB for the next 1-2ish years.

People hate it won't buy it. Survivor bias.

How are they dealing with the absence of the 'Esc' key? Is it annoying to have the soft key or hardly noticeable?

I remapped my Caps Lock to Esc. My motor memory is adapting, and Caps Lock is actually closer.

I started as someone very sceptical about the touch bar. I don't like it yet, but I don't hate it now.

Its weird, I never missed the key when I hit it but it always felt strange due to lack of feedback. I ended up binding Capslock to Escape and training myself to use that instead. Now I don't care at all.

As someone how has to lug their MacBook from office to home everyday, i'm really looking forward to upgrading. As for the ports, a good 5k screen will work as a dock for the assortment of USB devices, headphones etc that I currently have to connect one by one each morning.

I played around with one waiting for my flight and was tempted to get one then and there as I heard my friends praise it and it felt nicer than my 2014 MBP.