I never felt comfortable with desktop envs, going back to KDE1 in the 90s. Used FVWM, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, LarsWM, Ion, WMI, DWM, spectrwm, Xmonad, sway, Weston, but never a desktop env due to missing flexibility and harder and harder config portability. My FVWM config still works, but GTK3 and GNOME configs are highly unlikely to work the same after 12 months.

Hey I hear you. I would say lxde is like e16 except less fancy looking.

VERY basic. like, you get to write a script to bind the print screen key to take a screenshot.

I don't use a DE, for much the same reasons you name, but I do use several pieces of LXDE, as they are generally built configurably and work well outside of the DE.