Before Yosemite the green button worked like a maximize button, and you had a separate fullscreen button on the other side. Now you need to ⌥-click the green button to maximize.
No, that's not what it does on macOS. It simply makes the window larger and has done that ever since it was introduced, I believe. (I think for many document-based apps this just means to make the window taller, for example.)
IIRC the green button was "zoom", meaning it should adapt the window size to the window content, which in most of the cases resulted with maximizing.
And it's still fundamentally flawed as ever. (since the suggested behavior in the HIG presumes contextual intent is something that's generally clear or even decidable from the content.)
I know, but it as close to maximize as it gets. That's not my point, but that the behavior has changed dramatically.
I've been a full-time Mac user for nearly 20 years and I'm kind of with jablan here. :)