I've disabled the Touch Bar in most apps through the undocumented NSFunctionBarAPIEnabled option, removed the default items, and put the relevant things in the expanded area to prevent accidental hits. I've have also remapped the ~ key to Escape (I use a custom keyboard layout where ` and ~ are accessed through
different means). I would very much prefer to have the physical keys back, but my current setup is at least tolerable.

Here's my Touch Bar setup: https://github.com/poiru/dotfiles/blob/7c3c837fbcf70f3a59fb47356482a40656843dcf/macos/setup.sh#L76-L88