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This annoys me so much, at least provide the option to make certain buttons globally accessible regardless of the applications context.

There is a way to do this. It took me a bit of googling but it is possible. I needed the function keys or IntelliJ would be rendered useless

Isn't a dealbreaker if you use it like I do and set a global touch bar configuration, which doesn't change. Only useful feature of the touchbar is Touch ID (which works very well). However, regarding your question about productivity: no it doesn't increase nor decrease with the touchbar (especially if you can work with caps lock being the ESC key in vim).

Hmm, yeah, I use volume and brightness constantly, so this is not great for me. Might try and get a refurbished with old ports, without the touch bar

You can set the touch bar to show "Expanded control strip" in Settings -> Keyboard -> Touch Bar Shows so you get the same layout as the physical keys.