Personally I haven’t jumped to i3-gaps, I’m happy with vanilla i3. And I like a minimal status bar, although plenty of virtual desktops have something full screen living in them.

Non-search based desktop environments haven’t been acceptable for at least a decade.

That article needs to expand on what it considers ‘single use’ as if you need to meet in person before making a single phone call, then you might as well talk in person. So it is safe to assume they mean more than that.