Classic and important question. By some rights, stack overflow is a site designed to help people escape vim, and fills time between users getting trapped with off topic conversations about programming:

https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/05/23/stack-overflow-helping...

Glad it wasn't the answer in your case, of course. :)

Ah that old excuse! Maybe she just wanted to talk to you

Best comment.

> but we had these messed up DEC keyboards with no ESC

One of these things? https://deskthority.net/wiki/File:LK201AA_top.jpg

I'd have trouble getting out of vi with that too.

Yes, exactly. We had a combination of DECstation 2100 and 3100s for the grad students to use.

So how do you get out of vi with that keyboard?

Best how we met story ever! Thanks for sharing.

One more reason never to use Emacs!

This was a vi problem; Emacs mainly uses escape for when your keyboard doesn’t have a meta key, which most did by the 1980s

I’m implying that it’s one more data point that you’re more likely to meet your soul mate if you use vi vs emacs.

Oh but only if there’s a crappy keyboard, like a contrived plot device in a rom-com.

Well come on now... F11?