I had to re-read it too. He does not say that the same dev should do all these things

Non deterministic garbage handling doesn't sound right in combination with C++. You have to do it your self. And you can make it deterministic.

What a well written article!

You can launch xfce-terminal in drop-down mode..

i3 inside XFCE? Sounds just like what I was looking for. How do you set that up?