Unfortunately, remapping escape to caps lock can lead to serious friction if you have to work with different laptops a lot, like I do. The muscle memory gets in the way a lot.
I always remap Caps Lock to Ctrl. I understand that Caps Lock needed to be next to Shift in typewriters, but in computers it seems like it is wasting a key in the home row for only be used sometimes for screaming (which can be done by holding shift...)
On macOS, this is easy. For everything else, I use mechanical keyboards that all run QMK/VIA so I remap it at the hardware level.
Ctrl-[ is accepted across Vim installs
Which is why I never went with CapsLock being both Ctrl and Escape depending of whether it's part of a key combo because it's whole setup. On the contrary, whenever I use someone else's machine I can quickly go in the settings, set the option and then set it off after I am done.
If only keyboard makers would just always put escape there.
Ctrl-C also works.
I map it on all my computers, works well, if I end up in an environment where I don't have the mapping I just use Ctrl-[ or stretch.
When I end up helping other devs and use their non vim setups...now that really trips me up. Capitals everywhere, random hjkls ... I have to really slow myself down when using a "normal" editor.