The best I can say about the Touch Bar is that I'm able to customize what the function keys can do in whatever placement I want. Overall its OK, but I don't use it the way Apple intended. I do wish the ESC was a hardware key.
I remapped my Caps to Esc, and recommend doing the same; as a vim user it's great.
I tried that configuration, but I found it's too easy to accidentally flick it with my finger and pop myself out of insert mode, and ended up going back to the default (with CapsLock completely disabled). I think Esc's placement far from the home row is intentional.
Oh, that is nice, I never noticed you can do this. OK I will give it a try. Thanks.
I map mine to Ctrl, and then in Vim I map `jk` to Esc.
Map your Caps Lock button to ESC
Among Emacs users, it's more common to have Caps Lock mapped to Control.
Caps for Ctrl, Ctrl for Esc. See picture - I'm very happy with this layout.