For what it's worth, it was designed for a keyboard that had ctrl positioned conveniently under the left palm. As others have pointed out, users today just rebind the key and they're good to go.
No rebinding required, it works great and I don't even think about it.. no issues with RSI either.
On the other hand, I've never liked chording, so I use evil on emacs to make it more vim-like and avoid having to chord much.
No more Emacs pinky.