A good argument could be made that vi is all about the typing speed boost you get from not using a meta key like control (or later alt or fn). The specific keys didn't matter, although having them near the home row is helpful.

Vi has the same model input model as teco/xtec and shares their key press economy. Emacs which started life as a teco macros went the other way. Decades ago I tried both and abandoned Emacs when the finger in charge of the control key started to ache. It was not just slower, it was painfully slower.