Some built such a foot pedal: https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch

Use of this silly pedal will hamper the user from learning various insert commands like a, A, o and O, and ones that combine motions with insert like C, cw, and so on.

A switch built into the chair seat which generates ESC when the user gets up could be useful, though.

I should have known. Still made my day.

Vim kinda has this. You can spend your entire time in insert mode, and then use <CTRL>-O to run an individual command.

What about ditching the caps-lock key and making it a "command" key, that you hold down to type in a command?

Typing ":%s/<complex regex>/<replacement>" while holding caps-lock would get old rather fast, in my opinion.

You'd really only need to hold it for the first character of any command, I guess. Though holding shift+capslock+; to write a capslock-: feels weird.

That's not a mode trigger?

But isn't it interesting that people would find that easy to use, despite being modal? This suggests that the conclusion from the article - to avoid modes - misses the point.

Which was precisely my point :)

imo not any more than hitting ctrl-f in notepad to bring up the search dialog is a mode trigger. Meaning I guess technically it is one but I don't parse it as such.

Note that on Mac and Windows, at least, you can trivially do this remapping. I do it on all my computers.

On a Mac, the keyboard preference pane in system prefs has a "modifier keys" section, which is bizarrely separately configurable for the built-in keyboard vs. a USB keyboard on their laptops. On Linux, the configuration is different for the VT vs. window managers.

It's configurable per-keyboard because not all keyboards have modifiers laid out the same way. Mac keyboards have the bottom row ordered Ctrl, Alt, Cmd; Windows keyboards are ordered as Ctrl, Win, Alt. So, if you're using a Windows USB keyboard on an Apple laptop, you'll often want to swap Cmd (= Win) and Alt on the USB keyboard, but leave them alone on the internal one.