The ESC key in vi is idempotent. It's not doing it wrong to hit it thousands of times. It's doing it wrong to have to model the state of your editor in your head.
I have a similar habit of typing "git " in my terminal, and then getting distracted while I think through what I'm trying to do, and then just typing "git " again. Rather than punish myself, I just wrote a script called git-git. https://github.com/jes5199/git-git so I can type "git git git push" and it works.
I tend to agree with this, but in the circles I run in where it was used it's also spelled 'wut'. I was a little confused when I first saw it here on HN as 'wat'.
Back when I used Visual Studio (1999), I did something similar using Robby the Robot (Warning), Daleks (for errors), the "You have the power" (Compilation successful) chick from RevCo's Gila Copter/Silence of the Lambs, and a Skinny Puppy rift (hitting a breakpoint)...good times!
alpb I use iTerm2, it just uses the system sound as I explained. Make sure you didn't enable "Silence bell" under iTerm2 prefs, Profiles, Terminal (the tab), Notifications.
I have a similar habit of typing "git " in my terminal, and then getting distracted while I think through what I'm trying to do, and then just typing "git " again. Rather than punish myself, I just wrote a script called git-git. https://github.com/jes5199/git-git so I can type "git git git push" and it works.