As a vim user, escape is too high up on most modern keyboards anyway. The ADM-3A terminal vi was invented on placed it to the left of the Q key, which was a lot easier to reach. HHKB puts it where the tilde key traditionally is, which is pretty close to the original intent of vi.
Remapping tilde on touchbar MacBook Pros would be a good solution, if there was an obvious other place to put tilde/backtick.
I've been used to the control key in that position since about 1980:
http://www.hp9845.net/9845/history/comparison/images/closeup...
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/132564/how-can-i-r...
More people need to map Caps Lock to Control. It just makes sense, and it's where control use to be on many old Sun keyboards.
That said, I've had caps lock bound to backspace for years, so I'm not advocating for something I do myself.