I'm the same, 30 years & C-x 1/2/3 C-x o, and that's about the extent of it.

But tbh it's actually pretty powerful and sufficient for my purposes and I wish the various tiling window managers were just that.

I’ve also been doing exactly that for 20 years and will probably do it for 20 more years :) it works everywhere and is perfectly adequate and flexible!

EXWM is ;). I used it for about a year, but ultimately found the performance, and in particular a low language server locking up the window manager, unacceptable.

I just switched to exwm and I'm curious if the article will teach me some tricks which might be useful there. My initial experience is good but it is still a bit rough around the edges. In other words, I have not yet found my best configuration and workflows.

StumpWM uses Common Lisp, and can be setup to be nearly identical to Emacs window management. It is also quite performant. Out of the box, its configuration is pretty nice already.

But is there a reasonable way to handle emacs buffers inside stumpwm?

Yes, absolutely. There are several StumpWM modules providing integration with Emacs. You can also roll your own functions.

Yes. Same for me as well. It just works and is easy for my fingers to remember without consciously thinking about it.

Similarly. I do have

     (global-set-key (kbd "M-o") #'other-window)

since C-x o is a bit much, but I don't feel any need for all these extra packages.

But it's nice to have such an in-depth reference, Karthik's articles are always very educational and interesting.

I use the <apps> key, usually I hit it with the base of my right hand.