What bugs me is that they chose a character right next to "Return" on the keyboard. For some reason no PC keyboard has moved it.
I've had embarrassing MS-DOS moments in the past where I was typing out something like a recursive-delete on a path. If you accidentally hit RETURN instead of a backslash then you can do things like blow away entire parent directories unintentionally. This didn't exactly improve my already-critical view of PCs. :)
It's funny to think of how standardized keyboards are within the US today, and yet it wasn't so long ago that you couldn't even count on the arrow keys being in the same place (or in fact, being there at all - which is why you have hjkl on Vim to this day.
On the other hand, the computers at Bell Labs had an arrow key, which is why R (which is based on S) uses '<-' for assignment, as the two-character combination was enabled for compatibility reasons.
And on a related note, I can't imagine how people use Vim without rebinding ESC to Caps_Lock. Given that ESC used to be where TAB currently is (and the latter is too useful to be removed), I don't really see a point in keeping the obsolescent Caps_Lock, especially when it's so irritating to keep moving the hand to the furthest corner of the keyboard.
I usually swap the left ctrl and the Caps lock keys, mostly out of habit from the first computer I used (An actual computer, with the Magnetic Tape spools and punch-card boot loader).
I have also dealt with crappy tiny keyboards that don't even have any keys beyond the standard chunk (So no function keys, 10-key, or arrows / browsing control)
As a frequent vim user I probably should have done the caps-as-esc remap but by now caps-as-control is so engrained in my muscle memory that I now have a significant friction to changing it.
My favorite keyboard happens to be the Apple Extended Keyboard II, but I can't use one these days because its caps key would physically toggle between on and off states (like a typewriter caps key) which means it does not make a very good candidate for remapping.
That is interesting, I have had the exact opposite experience!
I have never seen a PC keyboard with the backslash anywhere other than in the bottom LEFT corner next to your left smallest/pinky finger with one exception: in Germany and France, they keyboards sometimes have backslash on the top line numerical keys.
Germany has a really awkward position for this key. You can only reach it by hitting 'Alt Gr' (the right Alt key) and a _right_ key in the row of digits. One-handed and similar (albeit mirrored) to the US layout's access to ~.
I .. switch all my keyboard to the US layout because I feel that I kill my fingers otherwise to reach {[]}| and \
I have always hated how the colon is used in windows for drive letters, there have been way too many times where I would type a long path only to realize that there is a semi-colon at the beginning.
I've had embarrassing MS-DOS moments in the past where I was typing out something like a recursive-delete on a path. If you accidentally hit RETURN instead of a backslash then you can do things like blow away entire parent directories unintentionally. This didn't exactly improve my already-critical view of PCs. :)