This is one of the big reasons why Snow Leopard is legendary as a favorite OS X (now macOS) release - it focused on reliability and performance rather than adding new features. I wish more software would follow that sort of major release cadence!

Catalina could certainly do with a refinement release for internals (e.g. APFS) as well as UI polishing.

Disclaimer: I've been using Catalina as my main OS since it came out.