Great, the butterfly keys were an enormous downgrade in terms of comfort, and one of the reasons I sold my 2017 Macbook Pro. But will they still keep that awful touchbar where the Esc and F1-12 are supposed to be? Then I'll still be passing.
If you use the escape key often, it should be where caps-lock is. Mac OS X even has a built-in setting for this.
If you only use it once in a while, it doesn't really matter that it's a virtual touch key.
F1-12 has always been a horrible interface. They're too far away from home row. There's a reason why many hyper-optimized keyboads like Ergodox don't come with one. Letter-based keyboard shortcuts are always better, and are usually easier to remember because you can associate the letter they use with a word (Cmd+B for "Build").
The touch bar is objectively a better use of that space if you ask me, it just came with an unacceptable price jump. It's not that much better than the old key row