[klutometis]

What Erik describes in this paragraph is painfully apparent to me whenever I see someone interact with such a stacked desktop:

"[W]indowing was to emulate the familiar, comforting desktop, a cluttered one at that. But it is extremely difficult to use efficiently a system that displays bits and pieces of documents . . . with just their edges sticking out here and there to identify them."

Using e.g. StumpWM's windowlist, I can unambiguously navigate to some desired window without guessing from partial information.

If it is the case, furthermore, that "windowing was to emulate the familiar, comforting desktop;" I think it's a skeuomorphism that we can profitably abandon.