It's a fair point. I learned ESC long years before ^[ and it's stuck in my muscle memory. But a new user might benefit from using ^[ instead. Some keyboards put F1 where ESC belongs, and my habit has been to remap F1 to NOP because help is so annoying, but maybe I should remap ESC to help. That would get me to switch over in short order.
I've remapped capslock to ESC. I can't remember ever wanting to use capslock mode since I first learned to touch type. Much easier to have Esc there. Or Backspace, Home, End, or delete are also good options.
Like sibling, I also mapped capslock to control. I use ^[ instead of ESC and there are other control-<whatever> shortcuts that are extremely useful, so it gets more utility than ESC would.
Of course, then I bought a kinesis advantage2 keyboard and now suddenly every key is easy to press, even the cursor keys.
