Forty years of programming
Dear Vim beginner, before getting a fancy keyboard, do remap Esc to some other key.<p>It makes <i>no</i> sense to have your most important key where it is nowadays.<p>The reason the back to normal mode key is ESC is because that key used to be much closer from the home row.<p>My personal preference is to use Caps Lock because each OS has an easy solution for this simple remap and since it&#x27;s system wide you can use vim modes elsewhere too (zsh and gdb for me mostly). Also in general it&#x27;s quite convenient to have escape so close.<p>Do what you will but please don&#x27;t suffer uselessly for stupid historical reasons.