On the other side, it is probably the most unnecessary inflicted pain for beginners. Even after years of using vim on a daily basis, I can't get used to hjkl and still use the arrow keys. I tried a few times with different approaches, but it never lasted more than a few days. So pushing someone new to use hjkl for navigation is so unnecessary and just kills a lot of motivation for very little value.
Starting with deleting, yanking and pasting would be a lot more fun. Even navigation with gg and G plus numbers would be a lot more useful too. Like when you get an error message that is caused by line 42, you know why you want to use vim next time.
The way I got used to hjkl home row was by completely disabling the arrow keys in my vimrc file (in normal and insert modes). I was struggling before that though.
I don't disagree that it might not be the best thing to introduce to new users right off the bat. It's really nice if you force yourself to get used to it, but it's also cool to never use them. Not using them does give you four free homerow keys to map! But they're really nice if you can get used to them.
Maybe the problem is that you are not supposed to rely solely on hjkl for navigation? Not sure how others use it, but for me most of the navigation are performed with <C-d> / <C-u> / search (long range) or f, w, b etc (shorter range, usually with modifiers). hjkl are almost always used in combination with these to adjust the initial / final location of the cursor.
I sometimes use arrow keys (especially when in edit mode and I don't want to reach up to escape ...) hjkl really shines when combined with other operations like `d5l` or even smarter things.
Starting with deleting, yanking and pasting would be a lot more fun. Even navigation with gg and G plus numbers would be a lot more useful too. Like when you get an error message that is caused by line 42, you know why you want to use vim next time.