The historical reason why home row keys are used for movement instead of cursor keys is irrelevant. Even if the idea was a historical accident, it turned out to be a good idea. Not having to move the position of your hand to move the cursor is comfortable and fast.
The reason vim doesn't use cursor keys for movement is not because of some secret insight but because the keyboard it was invented on didn't have them.
Similarly the concept of modes was just due to the time period. Commands were the normal way to operate editors. For many people, not many years had gone by since the editing was done on a teletype. Interactive editing was barely even a thing.
I recommend the `micro` editor.