Yup. Remapping Caps Lock is kind of a shibboleth for Vim/Emacs users. Emacs users remap to CTRL; I hear Vim users remap to ESC.

Vim users do indeed. I still get a bit of ESC pinky, but not nearly as bad as the default layout would cause.

Wouldn't you hit ESC with your ring finger or middle finger instead? (When I used vim, I preferred Ctrl-C so I would not have to move my fingers so far.)

That would require lifting my hand off the home row, which would be uncomfortable on my wrists. Playing around with it now, the motion seems to be more of a sideswipe, with a bit of muscle tone to keep the finger from just bending out of the way.

Side note - I've noticed a big improvement in general hand pain since I got into climbing regularly, and specifically starting working with a hand exerciser.

I sometimes wonder who came up with the idea for Caps Lock anyway. I cannot remember ever using that key except by accident.

Because you got me curious enough to look this up:

It apparently originates from typewriters, when holding shift was quite physically taxing (since it literally shifted all the typeheads over to put alternate characters over the ribbon); so caps lock saved a lot of finger strain when typing acronyms or writing symbol-heavy text.

Thank you! It is kind of fascinating how much legacy from the typewriter era modern keyboard carry with them.

I like mapping jk to ESC for vim/evil-mode, then swapping caps lock and CTRL for the comfy tmux and readline ergonomics. (I've tried readline's vi mode, but I didn't like it.)