I prefer a tiling WM for programming work. On my personal PC I actually use GNOME or KDE or something. But on my old study machine and my current work machines it's i3 all the way. Being able to quickly tile 4 terminals together makes my work much easier. Often I have many terminals open, each with a bash history specific to what I'm doing there. Workspaces then act as a sort of bundle of applications with the same general purpose. For instance, one workspace for installing and copying stuff to a machine, another for VNC related stuff, etc. If I'd have to alt+tab between 8 terminals I'd never know which one is which. But now I can remember them by location which is way easier mentally. Similarly I sometimes have multiple projects open in an IDE, and I usually remember which workspace is for which project.

It's even better on 4K monitors, where having 4 1080p terminals open is amazing. I can see everything and I only need to move my eyes. No keypress to switch terminal, everything is right there.