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Comment by nocman | Hacker News Reader

"Hitting Escape is usually unnecessary; Ctrl+[ is a lot closer, and more comfortable."

I agree with a lot of the things in this article, but wow, I could not possibly disagree with this quote more. Ctrl+[ is WAY more uncomfortable than using the Escape key.

Granted, I have many years of vim usage that have made hitting Escape a habit, and that probably plays a big part in it, but Ctrl+[ is downright painful for me (and yes, I sat and tried it for a while in vim to see what it would be like).

I can get from the home row to Escape and back with very little effort, though I understand that is not the case for many people. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I use my ring finger to hit Escape rather than my pinky (which would be a lot more work, I think).

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I suggest remapping Caps Lock to CTRL if you haven't remapped it already.

Plug for Karabiner on OS X, which lets you use capslock as a control if you press it with another key, and escape if its released on its own. It has ruined me for other computers that don't have this set up. There's also a way to do it under Linux, but I can't remember what the package is that lets you do that.

You're thinking about xcape: https://github.com/alols/xcape.

FYI, Karabiner is incompatible with MacOS Sierra. There's a project (Karabiner-Elements) to replace its (and Seil's) functionality, but I don't believe it has feature parity yet: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

Wow thanks for the heads up... that would have been a shitty thing to discover the hard way!

I prefer remapping Caps Lock to Escape. Ctrl is already positioned pretty conveniently.

Yeah, I've seen that suggestion for many many years, but unlike evidently almost every other programmer in the known universe, I still use Caps Lock for its intended purpose (and yes, I know all of the ways I could avoid using it, but I still want to use it for that). I understand why people would like using Caps Lock for a CTRL key, as it reduces the stretch distance for many key combinations, but I don't find it enough of a problem to justify the change.

So, I basically don't mind CTRL right where it is. It doesn't bother me for the things I use it for.

For me, the two-handed combo of CTRL-[ is just a lot more work than the single-handed move of my ring finger to the ESC key. I don't have trouble getting my left hand back to the home row quickly after doing so either. Moving CTRL to Caps Lock would alleviate that some, perhaps, but I don't think it would be enough of an improvement to make me prefer CTRL-[ over Escape.

I've always liked Control just fine where it is. Maybe my hands are weird, but I find it easier to reach than Caps Lock. I just curl my little finger a bit, and push the key with my knuckle.

The layout is also symmetrical.

Actually hitting escape is one of the things I most disliked, so learning CTRL+[ is great for me!

> I could not possibly disagree with this quote more. Ctrl+[ is WAY more uncomfortable than using the Escape key.

Did you try it with one hand or two. I do it by using my left pinky on the ctrl key and my right pinky on the [ key. In general, I've always tried to stick with the touch typing convention where you use the modifier key on the opposite side of the keyboard relative to the key you press.

For example, I will always press the left shift key for capitalizing I and the right shift key to capitalize A (and similarly with the alt or ctrl keys). It's more ergonomic, IMO (and also the reason I dislike keyboards that are missing modifier keys on one side of the keyboard).

"Did you try it with one hand or two."

^^ was this supposed to be a joke? (I laughed at first when I thought you meant stretching the left hand between the left CTRL key and the [ :-D ).

I guess I could see someone trying to type it one-handed with their right hand, but I would have never even have thought to do that (and I don't know that I ever use the right CTRL key anyway).

Outside of the CTRL keys, I touch type pretty much everything normally, with very few exceptions (like using my ring finger on Escape). I find moving my right pinky to the right CTRL key to be very uncomfortable, so I just always use the left CTRL key.

> I guess I could see someone trying to type it one-handed with their right hand

That's exactly what I was thinking of. Years ago, I used to press key combinations like ctrl-c, ctrl-x by moving my left hand away from the home row and using my pinky on the ctrl key and my index finger on the c or x key. I thought you may have been doing something like taking your right hand off the home row and pressing the key combination with your thumb and index finger.

But I do find that using the modifier key on the opposite side of the keyboard requires less contortion for a given key combination (e.g., the shift-v or ctrl-v combinations for linewise or blockwise visual mode).

The first thing I do on any new computer I get is to swap the mapping for the caps lock and left ctrl keys. This makes ctrl+[ super easy (double pinky flick), and it also makes using the vim window commands (ctrl+w) easy to access, which I use a lot.

I double tap j to get out of insert mode.

ctrl+[ is closer but with an already over-used right pinky it is a bad idea. i much prefer jk as <esc>.

yeah, and with the only Ctrl-[ option that I would consider, you are having to use both pinkies simultaneously. I have a feeling I would just end up missing all the time and getting irritated.

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