[Lancey Howard]

Now how about that placebo key up in the upper left corner of the keyboard, the one that says “Esc” and does nothing at all?

I used to tap that key over and over when I accidently clicked on a wrong link or watched an hour glass icon for too long, thinking the key was an “escape”, like it would simply stop the computer from doing whatever it was doing and simply return me to where I was. It took me years to figure out it was actually just a dead key that does absolutely nothing. Okay, the joke was on me, ha ha.

Is everybody at Microsoft still getting a big laugh out of that prank?

[discostu]

Escape works on DOS apps that have been written to pay attention to it. Just added that functionality to some tools we have at work. I don’t anybody in the Windows world bothers to capture it.

[bgill]

The “ESC” key is to escape from whole screen video pages.

[Domestic Church]

I use the escape key in visual basic/showcase queries to get out when the search is bad/endless and I want to stop it. I use it if I am getting out of a full size video screen to get back to a smaller screen. It isn’t a dead key for everyone.

[zeugma]

The ESCape key is used a lot in Unix systems. Windoze /= the entire computing world.

[ansel12]

Now how about that placebo key up in the upper left corner of the keyboard, the one that says “Esc” and does nothing at all?

Somewhere between making the elevator show up quicker, or like adjusting the dummy thermostat that we install in plain sight in large offices.