That's a bit of an oversimplification. Especially given how none of those keyboards look THAT different than what we use today. In particular, Vim's use of the home row for movement is objectively better than moving your hand off the home row and using the arrow keys (which you can do if you wish as well). I'm sure if someone was creating Vim today, they might choose WASD instead since many are familiar with the use of those keys for movement in gaming.
I would prefer they pick jkl; instead of hjkl. I'm not a fan of shifting my right hand left and even less enthused about forcing my index finger into double duty on jh.
As a long time vi and vim user, I disagree. Learning the keys tends to happen in stages (with arrow keys being stage 1) and reliance on hjkl is not the final stage. When you truly master vi/vim you barely use hjkl at all. Instead, you use fFtT/?nN;, text objects, addresses, and marks. These tools allow you to move to places in text and make changes at a glance without dealing with all the characters or lines in between.
But you have to relocate your hand from the home row to use arrow keys. Arrow keys are great and all, but the vi/vim benefit to home row arrows is a lot less travel for your (usually) right hand, which can be a great ergonomic win.
