I've heard about it. I didn't try to look very deep it. They claim they started from scratch and they still made hjkl.

jkl; would get you movement over home row without moving hand/fingers at all. ijkl would get you movement without involving pinky and some people like that.

If you have (and I do) column-staggered ergonomic keyboard - meaning columns are shifted according for length of your fingers - hjkl makes you move fingers to columns that are slightly off.

I don't see a single objective benefit for choosing hjkl on its own. Yet it's still there and I don't take "they did in vi" as valid for new editor. They could make alternative scheme for vi-comers, but as main idea again?

What you mentioned - g-h and g-l - are definitely more consistent than what vi did.