feel free to list other window managers you’ve used.
I have been happy with bspwm, but considering trying something else. I love its simplicity and immense customizability. I like that it is shell scriptable, but it is not a deal breaker feature for me.
I like how the binary split model makes any custom partition possible.
That’s what made me start using EXWM (Emacs X Window Manager). With Emacs you end up managing “windows” (that outside Emacs would be called “panes”). With EXWM Emacs really is your desktop, and X applications run inside its windows. So that meant I no longer had two windowing models to manage (Emacs and WM), just one. There was a lot to like about that.
But… Emacs as a window manager, and using your development environment as your window manager, has other issues. Especially restarting it becomes more onerous. So I went back to i3 and am very happy. With a few minor customizations I can integrate Emacs and i3 very comfortably.
But another Emacs point vis-à-vis window managers is many committed Emacs users, require only trivial functionality from our window managers. I usually have a web browser and an Emacs window and that’s it, with occasionally something else running. I was pretty happy with Unity with crude tiling where I could split a conventional WM’s screen into two.
The main reason I use i3 is it gives me access to easy customization and has a windowing model I can work with, and one day I should be able to migrate to sway on Wayland without much drama.