No, you're 100% right. The only reason it's this way is this: https://pikuma.com/blog/origins-of-vim-text-editor

These literally were the arrow keys on the machine that vim was originally developed on.

The reason it's so popular is because it provides directional navigation on the home row, with the direction that's by far the most common (down) under your strongest, dominant finger (the index finger).

It's much better for both efficiency and ergonomics than arrow keys.

Why would you move your hand to arrow keys when the letter are already under your fingers?

ESC, use-letter-to-navigate, i, type, ESC, navigate, i, type

Really simple. On my keyboard I re-mapped ESC to TAB so I don't even have to move my hand to switch between navigate and insert modes.

moving my hand this much SUCKS

Vim has several modes. INSERT mode let's you write text, NORMAL mode let's you navigate (with h,j,k,l and others) and perform operations on the text with your keyboard, like "dw" to Delete Word or "A" to enter insert mode at the end of the line.

You can use arrow keys to navigate in insert mode. However I just press escape, which changes to normal, navigate to where I want to, then change to insert mode.

I may seem like this makes simple navigation complex, and it kinda does. But complex navigation becomes easier.

Vi (and vim and neovim)'s primary concern is viewing and editing code, writing is secondary (although it's still an excellent experience)

Yes, (neo)vi(m) has different modes, in normal mode the characters are shortcuts, hjkl is used for navigation. However other methods are prefered, w, e, b - jumping words, f,t - jumping to a specific character etc. Its way faster. Also it can be combined d2w (d)eletes the next (2) (w)ord. Or more advanced di" (d)eletes the text (i)nside the "..."

Insert mode is what you except: it writes what you type. Can be accessed by i - (i)nsert before a - (a)append after. Going back to normal mode is ESC (or many configure tab)