Now 99% of my window is the text I'm editing (two lines reserved for modeline and minibuffer). Nothing pops up or makes its presence known until the moment I need it. Tabs are a good example. I often have close to a hundred files "open" in Emacs but I don't need to know about them until the moment I'm ready to switch to one.
I was 10 years ahead of VS Code taking off but when I look at that I still see a bunch of useless distractions taking up valuable screen space.