Agreed. Even Windows has some nice stuff when it comes to windows management IMHO. Every time I end up on macOS I miss the various Windows/GNOME behaviours e.g. window snapping to the right/left half, pressing the Win key to see all open apps, maximise buttons that doesn't put the whole app into full screen mode, etc.
Instead of win key, you can press F3, or just set a hotkey that works for you in the System Preferences
Instead of clicking the red maximize button, you can double-click the window header / title. This will use an algorithm to try to resize the window to the best size for its content.
Technically it’s zoom, and how it functions is dependent on the app. In Finder it used to resize the window to a size that contained all the icons. Clicking it again would revert the window size.
The app still gets to decide though! Most programs do go full size with an alt+green click, but not all. A column-style Finder window, for example, seems to go taller but no wider.
macOS gained window snapping last year, and you can bind some keyboard shortcut to the “exposé” view (which is triggered by a trackpad gesture by default)
full screen is still its own thing as you mention, though
