Only better if you are up for 500mb of dependencies and having to learn Haskell to configure your desktop.
Configuring XMonad is a very good reason to learn Haskell, among many others.
And apart from a little arcane syntax, you absolutely don't have to learn any real Haskell to configure xmonad.
No, but you have to learn a REALLY arcane syntax!
http://xmonad.org/