Interesting. I do similar (lots of Rails) but have pretty much the opposite experience (other than battery life - Mac definitely wins there). Though I use i3/Sway more than Gnome. The performance of running our huge monolith locally is much better for Linux users than Mac users where I work.

I used a Mac for awhile back in 2015 but it never really stood out to me UX-wise, even compared to Gnome. All I really need to do is open a few windows and then switch between them. In i3 or Sway, opening and switching between windows is very fast and I never have to drag stuff around.