Also... the F1 keys are like super important for debugging. Sure, you can click with the damn mouse in the button for step in, over, run, etc, but the thing is faster with F keys.
Even if mac apps come mapped to other keys, many peaplo still runs windows with bootcamp, virtual box etc and wine programs in apple computers, making things even harder.
And about external keyboards? Apple keyboards comes with F keys... they are going to be uselles now?
This is really just a war of opinions now, but the F1 keys are indispensable to me. My fingers rest on the hotkeys for "step into", "step over", "run to breakpoint" and I can keep my eyes glued to the watch list, inspecting the variables at each step. Some times you want to quickly step into functions, other times step over, and it's just really handy to have it mapped to keys.
I'm not even a power emacs user or something (IntelliJ is my preferred IDE). YMMV of course, but I find the hotkeys super useful.
But what if your IDE simply adds the debugger buttons to the touch strip instead? They could even have the correct icons and update state as you debug. Seems even better to me.
It's really odd when people say "I need one function key for some application specific operation", when those kinds of things are pretty much exactly what an adaptable, customizable touch row is perfect for. If apple could have read the touch bar complaints before, they probably would have been convinced to put a touch bar in earlier.
Main point for touch strip is changing icons/state. But that's absurd because not even my mother blind types.
This is clearly another fancy thing that removes functionality.
I have a blank keyboard, I never look at it, when I use for debugging I'm extremely fast as I don't have to look back and forth on keyboard and screen or use mouse (who uses mouse that much anyway?), I'd miss F keys if I bought the new macbook pro.
There will be one, they've shown it in some of the promotional imagery. I think everybody is just up in arms about the physical key being gone.
I'm a heavy vim user and use the ESC key all the time. If I get the new MacBook Pro I'll probably see how the touch key works, and then rebind if it's necessary. It's not the end of the world.
I'm not a Mac User, but I use THE ESC key extensively to cancel out of dialogs.