I've read that Colemak is easier to pick up because it more closely aligns to QWERTY, but apparently I've confused easy transition with the best place for symbols.
Colemak only rearranges letters and semicolon compared to US QWERTY, thus punctuation remains in the same awful spots.
The layout can be greatly improved by putting those symbols on a layer around the home row, in arrangement not particularly different from, for example, Programmer Dvorak.
I get your point about terminal keyboards, but I'm not sure about your c-reference?
If you look at various terminal keyboards from the era before 1980s, the arrangements are mostly random. Some bit-paired, some not; they're tied to the interfaces of proprietary systems, they were shipped with (pretty much like nowadays, but without any standardization).
To be specific, compare the VT100 keyboard used with PDP-11 (related to the C language and Unix) to earlier-used Datapoint (3300/2200) keyboards (associated with the B language).
And what is ridiculous about hjkl?
It's just some weird, probably mnemonic thing from the ADM-3A terminal.
It isn't in the home resting position, and using all four fingers (that obviously don't move independently) to move around a bit more is just straining (middle+little finger is especially bad).