I've also used the same program to disable touch bar esc. This way there are no accidental presses. I did it by mapping esc to 'vk_none' for the 'no product name' device, which is how Karabiner sees touch bar.
I still dislike the keyboard because of its failure rate, but the layout is ok for me now.
I also have Caps Lock mapped to Command (Ctrl). And since my biggest use of the Esc key is when using Vim, I simply press Caps Lock + [ ( Ctrl + [ ) to switch to Normal Mode. So only my right pinky leaves the home row.
I have the MBP "Escape" (without the Touch Bar), but if I did have the Touch Bar this would avoid 90% of the issues involving not having a hardware Esc key for me.
I've also used the same program to disable touch bar esc. This way there are no accidental presses. I did it by mapping esc to 'vk_none' for the 'no product name' device, which is how Karabiner sees touch bar.
I still dislike the keyboard because of its failure rate, but the layout is ok for me now.