It's tiling is like i3 except it uses manual layouts instead of dynamic. So when you create yet another xterm window it does not rearrange all the other tiles on your screen, it just creates a new tab in the current frame. If you want a new horizontal or vertical split, you create it explicitly. I open shells like browser tabs, so if the default was to somehow find screen space for each one, I'd be looking at hundreds of 2x2 sized xterms. Honestly if I could get i3 to behave like this I'd probably switch (and I've tried...I realize you can set a pane into tab mode, but I find it's still too easy to totally mess up your layout if you are not careful in i3. Anyone got tips?).
I also once used Awesome, and the constant reshuffling of the screen layout drove me crazy. Did not really care for the fixed layouts either.