This is me. I tend to order projects onto their own desktops[0], each with several app windows open. With an external monitor there's plenty of space, and... Yeah: with command-tab thoroughly committed to muscle memory it usually doesn't matter much if they end up on top of each other. If it does, I'll put them next to each other. Stickies usually go out of my eye-line to the left side of the screen, so I'll keep that otherwise clear.

I sometimes maximize something - other than video calls: those are always full-size - on the laptop screen, but otherwise not at all.

I can see how a full-screen IDE makes sense, but I don't use one, so I always want a couple of terminal sessions running alongside my editor.

There are vanishingly few contexts in which I find full-screen helpful. Not criticizing anyone else, or recommending my way of working, but it's what works for me.

[0] I would like better support for desktop management: naming and shortcutting, particularly. Years ago I tried some (I think it was Alfred, or a predecessor) add-on that promised that, but it was super flaky. Does anything exist that works well?

This is me almost exactly. Windows pile up being whatever size feels appropriate, organized only by virtual desktop. If screen #2 is a laptop screen or the program in question is an IDE with a billion panes I might resize it to fill the screen, but otherwise it’s rare. I practically never use full-on fullscreen.

It’s so ingrained I tend to get frustrated on other desktops, which are nearly all built around the Windows mentality of keeping displays filled to the brim with tiled or maximized windows.

Even on the handful of times with maximize/tile on macOS, it’s with a gap of a few pixels of desktop peeking through so it doesn’t feel as “boxed in” and claustrophobic.