[czeidler]

Once you mastered the Kinesis Advantage you don't want to go back. Your hands move way less on the Kinesis than on a normal keyboard. Maybe this is also the reason why I always found the use of ESC in vim an odd choice, i.e. you have to move your hand to reach the ESC key. Moreover, the Kinesis has the arrow keys below the "c" "v" "m" "," keys so you can navigate without moving your hands, this is similar to vim but without the annoying mode switches.

[adrianratnapala]

> without the annoying mode switches.

Hmm, I've used Vi and other editors long enough that I find it annoying that most editors enter text when in normal mode.

[Lio]

The choice of escape in Vi was because it was originally developed for a keyboard like this terminal.

https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/LSI-AD...

Where escape is in a similar place to tab on PC keyboards. Also note the arrows on the home row.

Most dedicated vim users will move to using C-[ probably with caps lock mapped to Ctrl.

Other alternatives are map caps lock to escape or even have caps lock as escape when pressed and ctrl when held.

[camgunz]

Ctrl-[ instead of Esc has probably saved my life.