I don't know anyone who remaps capslock to esc. It just sounds like something that is fun to say on hackernews. You didn't even say you use it, you said a lot of vim devs do, to which i would counter--they dont.

The better choice is remapping capslock to ctrl.

I do! I'm both a heavy vim user and have my ESC remapped to capslock. And otherwise ESC=>^] anyway so you can always do that (however it's a bit awkward so I'd rather use capslock).

Another thing I really do think deserves to be mentioned is which developer do really spend extended amount of time on the laptop keyboard when not traveling? Both at home and work I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and keep the laptop docked with 3 external displays, with these new 5k-monitors two will probably be enough.

I'm not the GP, but for what it's worth I do remap capslock to esc. I mostly use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard where the escape key is one of the chiclet rubber keys, so using vim (at all) really begs for either a remapped esc or brain-retraining to use ctrl-[.

I'm not sure if it's a better or worse choice to remap capslock to ctrl - but it's certainly viable. The old Sun keyboards used to have that layout...

I know a lot of people doing that. Personally, I map caps lock to esc when pressed, and ctrl when pressed with another key. The best of both worlds.

I do. And judging from the list of articles that explain on how to do it for various platforms I suppose a lot of people do. The carabiner-elements is a whole (popular) program to do just that (by default, it has more options as well)

I know lots of people who do (including myself). Just look at the support requests on Karabiner, etc.

Yeah, I'm totally baffled as to who productively uses VIM and reaches waaaay up there with their pinky. In the first 10 minutes of learning I was googling "mac remap caps lock escape", and I haven't touched the actual escape key in years.

Agreed! The old laptop had a bad placement for ESC anyway — major stretch!

I suspect that any devs picky enough about their typing that this would prevent them from buying this laptop are using alternate keyboards anyhow.

Agreed, I remapped it in vim 1 year into learning it because my pinky was starting to hurt.