The weird thing is that they could have added the touchbar and kept a full function key row and still have plenty of room for a good sized touchpad. The current Macbook's touchpad is arguably too large.

coming from the world of windows ultrabooks, it's sorta hard to imagine how a touchpad could be "too big". does the palm rejection suck, or is it just that you think the real estate could be used better for something else?

Coming from the world of tiling window managers on linux, I do not use a touchpad at all. On the Macbook I have to use it occasionally, but I still stay on the keyboard as much as possible.

So having to remap ESC to Capslock and often hitting the wrong arrow key is a much too big drawback to a bigger touchpad

As an example, both thumbs hovers the touchpad when my hands are on the keyboard. One of my thumb frequently taps and moves the cursor to another line all the while I am writing code. It's frustrating.

Imo, the touchpad on Macbook has always been its greatest strength and they managed to ruin it.

Totally agree. The loss of the arrow key space plus the no real escape key is the most pro-hostile (for coders at least) design decision. Although i guess could argue a keyboard that misses keys is worse but I haven’t had that problem.

Remap caps lock to Escape in the Keyboard settings. If you’re using vim keybindings, use HJKL for arrow keys.

I'm a hardcore vi user and even I miss-strike the arrow keys at times when I'm not using vi. Also, remapping caps lock to escape is great but for some reason I just can't get out of the habit of sending my pinkie or left ring finger up to the esc position. And for some reason, remapping caps-lock to esc has resulted in frequent esc-enter mis-type sequences, almost always when I've spent time writing long emails, thereby aborting the email with no draft to recover. Sheesh.

Good to know you're having trouble with the workarounds. I'm dreading get a newer MBP for this reason, but I mostly use a mech keyboard.

Sounds like you have a setup that works for you. If you're not planning on using it on the move then why does the keyboard matter to you?

I carried it home with me every night, where I use my maxed out 2013 MacBook Pro without the displays or external keyboard.

While thinner, the maxed out 2018 15" model is 4.02 lbs, whereas the maxed out 2013 15" is 4.46 pounds. To me, there isn't much difference in 'heft' between the two.