Tab is still important to programmers.

Developers with a new MBP manage by changing Caps Lock Key to Escape. Less pinky travel too.

If you need caps, you can download Karabiner and move caps to something else. I changed mine to pressing both Shift buttons.

> tab is still important for programmers

I disagree. If you are a even modestly decent programmer you know to configure autoindentation so that you never need the tab key for anything. I cannot imagine a scenario where I would need the tab key in insert mode (except a very fringe case where I need to enter a tab character in a literal string and for some reason there are no escapes like \t. But then again you can still ^V^I)

You can't autoindent python, regardless of how good a programmer you are.

of course you can!

you only need to press ENTER (to create a newline) and BACKSPACE (to exit the current block). You never need to press TAB

So presumably in a whitespace-sensitive language you would always leave insert mode to declare the whitespace?

Lots of editor use the tab key to autocomplete. It's often called "tab completion."

of course, in vim you have ^o for that

I wasn't only speaking about Vim. Even then going to Caps is less travel than Tab.

I use Caps less than I use Tab like for switching programs.

Whatever works for you.

Ah, no. autoindent is a nice feature that is never perfect.

can you point to a minimal example where vanilla vim autoindent cannot cope with python code editing? I never found any situation where I had to press the tab key

Have you ever refactored anything? Especially in Python, moving a line into a control block requires using the tab key. If you don't have to press the tab key either you're such a god programmer that you have never made a mistake or refactored anything you've ever written, or you're trolling.

there's >> and << for changing the indentation of a line.

And i'm not a good programmer, a good vim user at most