On my macbook, most of my windows are shifted to the right side of the screen, exposing about an inch and a half of desktop containing all my aliases to currently relevant files, drives, and folders. Icons are sized down to line height to maximize space. Sometimes I want to keep that stretch open and the files handy, other times not.
I've tried tilers and I could see how some people like them and could get quick with them, but they just weren't great for how I personally manage and think about using my computer. I'm a papers all over the desk kind of guy, not a security guard. I also have a 13" display, sometimes in practice smaller if I want my desktop files exposed, so tiling on top of each other makes windows too short, and tiling to the sides often makes them too skinny. I'm sure on a 17" laptop or a large monitor tiling isn't so constricting. Lots of apps these days are optimized for using most of a 13" display size, and lots of websites turn into a mobile site if your window is too small. I was spending more time fighting with the tiler, cycling through different tiling layouts, and changing parameters than I was just quickly and loosely dragging windows around as needs changed (After all, it only takes <1 second to move a window, and <1 second to resize, and I don't have to think about it at all, just like laying down a piece of paper on top of my desk). And I was using the tiler that was supposedly the best and most like the famous linux tilers (amethyst).