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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

you can map tab to esc inside vim so you dont need to type esc

    :imap <tab> <esc>

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Tab is still important to programmers.

Developers with a new MBP manage by changing Caps Lock Key to Escape. Less pinky travel too.

If you need caps, you can download Karabiner and move caps to something else. I changed mine to pressing both Shift buttons.

> tab is still important for programmers

I disagree. If you are a even modestly decent programmer you know to configure autoindentation so that you never need the tab key for anything. I cannot imagine a scenario where I would need the tab key in insert mode (except a very fringe case where I need to enter a tab character in a literal string and for some reason there are no escapes like \t. But then again you can still ^V^I)

Lots of editor use the tab key to autocomplete. It's often called "tab completion."

of course, in vim you have ^o for that

So presumably in a whitespace-sensitive language you would always leave insert mode to declare the whitespace?

You can't autoindent python, regardless of how good a programmer you are.

of course you can!

you only need to press ENTER (to create a newline) and BACKSPACE (to exit the current block). You never need to press TAB

I wasn't only speaking about Vim. Even then going to Caps is less travel than Tab.

I use Caps less than I use Tab like for switching programs.

Whatever works for you.

Ah, no. autoindent is a nice feature that is never perfect.

can you point to a minimal example where vanilla vim autoindent cannot cope with python code editing? I never found any situation where I had to press the tab key

Have you ever refactored anything? Especially in Python, moving a line into a control block requires using the tab key. If you don't have to press the tab key either you're such a god programmer that you have never made a mistake or refactored anything you've ever written, or you're trolling.

there's >> and << for changing the indentation of a line.

And i'm not a good programmer, a good vim user at most

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