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Comment by chairmanwow | Hacker News Reader

Many common applications that developers use have many keybindings that heavily rely upon the Escape key (Vim for sure).

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I've developed on a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years in vim and I have never touched the escape key or any of the F keys, ever.

If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho. Rebind esc to something else (like capslock) or learn another pattern that has more ergonomic value.

A lot of us live in a transient computing world, where we neither own nor have permissions to edit the bindings. Having one host with a binding and 6 other client's envs without, would a context switch failure invoke

The bindings are done on your macbook, it works seamlessly on the clients you connect too.

ctrl-[ works as escape. Also, what kind of devs don't get to customize their setup??

You'd be surprised. Some corporate environments keep machines pretty locked down in terms of what you can change in the System Preferences, or install on your own.

Adding a .vimrc file doesn't require administrator privileges on either Linux or macOS, nor does it require changing anything in System Preferences.

If for some reason you "can't" add a .vimrc file to a user account then you probably shouldn't be manually logging into that user account.

Can you request the change from your IT department?

Just fill in the ticket, call to follow it up, explain what you want again, re open the closed ticket, open the ticket again, do a few ritualistic incantations and you'll get there.

I'd say it's the norm for the 'enterprise' category of development.

> If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho.

So generations of Vim users are doing it wrong but you have the right answer?

The Vi editor was originally written on a terminal which had the Escape key positioned where the Tab key is on modern keyboards.

So yes, rebinding Escape is the right answer if you heavily use it. The normal positioning for Escape is very inconvenient for touch typing.

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

> So yes, rebinding Escape is the right answer if you heavily use it.

nobody does that because it was unnecessary. Of course, now developers need to ADAPT the Macbook instead of the Macbook ADAPTING developer's workflow. That's not the definition of a developer friendly machine. The touchbar is a gimmick and even then it doesn't justify the removal of an entire row of keys. It was purely an aesthetic decision. But I forgot, developers like to work with "beautiful" computers instead of functional ones /s

In my experience, quite a lot of people who take working on the keyboard seriously remap some keys.

I'm more of an Emacs guy, but still frequently hit Escape (I use it as the Meta key in Emacs). I've bound Escape to the Caps Lock key for as long as I can remember. Like I said, the normal location of Escape is way too far from the home row, and quite bad for touch typing.

In fact, the entire function row is too far for me to conveniently use while touch typing, and I have long fingers. I probably won't miss the function key row at all.

I haven't used or seen the actual touch bar, so cannot really make a strong statement whether it's a useless gimmick or actually useful. I have my doubts, but it could turn out to be useful in some applications.

Sorry, but removing this row of keys is entirely justified if you accept that the touchbar is a valuable addition. Having to reach over a row of useless keys (I suspect Apple's data would show ~90% of customers literally never use them, except for the system-control functions) to interact with the touchbar would seriously compromise it's utility.

> (I suspect Apple's data would show ~90% of customers literally never use them, except for the system-control functions)

Completely dishonest and backed by no fact at all, you can make up some data, I can too, I didn't. You call them "useless keys" but there are here for a reason. There are so useless than the touchbar can emulate this "useless" row, except that now users have to look at the keyboard to type since there is no physical feedback to guide them. this isn't innovation, this is a step back.

Calling it dishonest and backed by no fact at all and then go mentioning they are there for a reason. Can you elaborate? Historically they are programmable keys, not very standard at all. Same goes for the reason keyboards are staggered, to mimic mechanical typewriters that couldn't have the keys orthogonally placed. No problem changing that.

And no I'm not a fan of the Touch Pad at all, using a 2013MBP as a daily driver. I don't understand all the fuss.

> The normal positioning for Escape is very inconvenient for touch typing.

But what if you're not a touch typist? I'm not, and I use the ESC key all the time when using vi/vim, So much so, that it is almost a mindless reflex. I have no choice but to adapt, I know, but my most likely response to this will be to use my Linux laptop more frequently. I still have to use the Mac for OS X and iPhone development, but for other server side stuff, I guess I have to switch to Linux.

Recent generations, yes. vi was designed for a keyboard where the Escape key was where the Caps Lock key is today. When Escape ended up in a hard-to-reach place on the 103-key layout, vi users sighed and rolled with it (and new users didn't know any better.)

> the Escape key was where the Caps Lock key is today

Apparently it was where the Tab key was[1] as metafunctor pointed out.

[1] http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

I've been a vi user since 1996 and have always remapped the Esc key because it's too far from home. I had assumed others also did this because I've never seen a vi user who works without some customisation on commonly used boxes and it seems like one of the obvious first changes to make.

This is bullshit. You know what else is not on the home row? Most of the keys on the keyboard. The ESC key is very easy to hit without looking down, there is absolutely no need to remap it and I refuse to believe that people that grew up with keyboards with ESC keys ever feel the need to remap it.

> This is bullshit. You know what else is not on the home row? Most of the keys on the keyboard.

...So? You know where you spend most of your time in Vim? the home row. It's called that for a reason...

I grew up with `esc` way up in the corner, and as soon as I started learning Vim I googled for common workarounds to reaching so far. Refuse to believe it, but it's true.

I've never been able to touch-type a function key on any keyboard, ever. Replacing them with a dynamic interface like the TouchBar seems fine for a row I have to look down at every time, anyway. Even on my 2015 MBP I have to make sure I'm hitting a volume button and not the power button.

Programming is not regular touch typing. There are all kinds of punctuations and weird key combos you have to do frequently that are not on the home row. And yes, I hit function key combos without looking many times a day. I will not be buying this laptop.

Good on you. Neither am I, and I have no desire to convince you to. Point still stands that not everyone is as comfortable as you with reaching. I certainly spend most of my time outside of insert mode, firmly on the home row. When I'm done inserting, I want to be back on the home row as quickly and comfortably as possible. Reaching for the furthest row from it before returning home will always be the last thing I want to do.

Eh. I'm using Dvorak, so most of the keybindings in Vim are total madness anyways. For most regular typing, my fingers stay on home far more than you Qwerty typists.

Remapping Esc has always been one of the first tips that I read from experienced Vim users.

I've had Caps Lock remapped to Esc for years now.

I map Caps Lock to Control.

I do both! https://github.com/alols/xcape (Linux only)

This is the kind of advice that young programmers need to get earlier. I'm new to Vim and I'm slowly realizing that A) Vim is way more powerful than I originally gave it credit to be and B) I'm vastly underutilizing its power.

You don't even need to rebind the escape key. I've been using ^[ for years, and it works in basically all standard terminals and vims as the escape key.

15 years using Vim with the esc key. I have large fingers though.

You've never hit Ctrl-F5 to dump cache and refresh a browser window?

The escape key can be right there on the capslock (option to be enabled in System Preferences -> Keyboard). Using Esc key heavily with its default location is not practical at all. As for the F-keys I think this is more of a problem.

I use it in its default location literally thousands of times a day and I don't mind. (I use a Mac at work.)

Same here. I use the Escape key as Esc in vim and it would probably take me a long time to break that "muscle memory".

As for some recommendations others have had... I have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl and Ctrl-[ remapped for tmux so those are out.

This is the same across several machines (MBP and multiples ThinkPads) so the more feasible solution for me is to simply stop using the Mac.

IIRC Support for Caps Lock -> ESC mapping in System Preferences is new as of 10.12 (or maybe 10.12.1?), so many people may not know that's an option. I didn't until I read your post and checked!

How do you achieve this with just System Preferences? On 10.11.6, I see the System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys allows re-mapping to Nothing, Control, Option, and Command, but not Escape. Is this a macOS Sierra thing? Tell me your secrets!

It's a Sierra thing (and only the most recent update, 10.12.1, I believe).

OK. Just kicked off the download for Sierra. Thank you!

Check out Karabiner and Seil- you can even use these to map "tap capslock" to esc and "hold down capslock" to ctrl. (Seil has some issues in 10.12, but they're working on it.)

They have made karabiner-elements to do just some basic things and which works with sierra. I had a problem with it though as it remaps F-keys by default and it was clashing with Palua on 10.12

Yep added in latest Sierra

I had to install a third party program to get that to work, do they let you do that now?

Yes, it's an option in the normal Keyboard Modifier Keys system pane now.

I'm a big Vim user and I honestly wouldn't mind too much if I were to just remap the Esc key to capslock.

Vim user as well, while I haven't used the new device. Judging from the distance and where I hit the ESC key on the current keyboard, it shouldn't pose any issues. Even if they did remove it, the power of vim is the ability to just remap keys.

My control key is remapped to caps lock for tmux. Perhaps the lower-left control key could be escape?

I am a developer and don't use neither vi or Emacs.

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