Ask HN: What are the productivity benefits of tiling window managers?
I'd like to start out with a couple of assumptions, but please feel free to correct me on them if you aren't convinced by my reasoning:
1. A tiling window manager isn't necessary to efficiently switch between applications and windows (with or without the keyboard). The one OS I know well, macOS, has many different ways to do this without tiling windows.
2. A tiling window manager isn't necessary for programmatically customizing your window management. E.g., features like storing and retrieving window configurations, and moving and resizing windows programmatically aren't specific to tiling window managers. Again, there are macOS apps that do these things without being tiling window managers.
These assumptions are intended to keep the conversation focused on what actually differentiates a tiling window manager from a stacking window manager: That if you have two windows next to each other, and you make one of them larger, it will simultaneously make the other one smaller.
Finally, we can also safely assume that it isn't necessary to use an OS-level tiling window manager in order to be able to tile terminal windows, text editors, and file browsers, since for example, Visual Studio Code, Emacs, and vim/tmux can all tile those types of windows. But certainly points about why tiling those windows rather than stacking them is more productive would be very interesting to hear!
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791947