Re:Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi and John Ternus on the Sta...
by nsxwolf on Friday April 07, 2017 @09:47AM
(#14059565)
And you can reach ESC just fine on the touchbar anyway, it just isn't tactile. It's not like its in the middle of the function row or something.
I use an HHKB2, which has CTRL in the correct location, and the ESC key is one row lower, being next to the 1 key. It's still too far to reach and CTRL-[ is absolutely the best way to go. Reaching even further on a standard keyboard is just awful.
I've never quite figured out the continued popularity of the ESC key for vim using developers. For a touch typing vim user on most modern keyboard layouts generating an ESC by hitting the ESC key is more movement than generating an ESC by hitting CTRL-[. This is especially so if you have a keyboard that puts the CTRL key where God intended it to be (immediately to the left of the 'A' key). With CTRL in that location, hitting CTRL-[ is just a small pinky movement on each hand away from home position.
In earlier times, ESC made a lot of sense. On the ADM-3A, for instance, CTRL was in the proper location next to 'A', and ESC was immediately above CTRL, and '[' was at the far right side of the top row (near where BACKSPACE/DELETE is on most current keyboards). On that layout ESC was way more efficient than CTRL-[.