I always had two windows side by side on my 5:4 screen. On 16:9 I have three windows side by side, which isn't as useful, and I lose several lines of text. It's not a hipster thing. I've been saying widescreen is stupid for monitors since before everyone had them. I have widescreen in my living room, though.
Which resolutions are/were those monitors? I've only ever seen 5:4 monitors in 1280x1024, so a 16:9 monitor at 1920x1080 would give you slightly higher vertical resolution and some nice additional horizontal space.
Two windows side by side on 1280x1024 are 640 pixels wide each, on 1920x1080 three windows are the exact same width each, plus you get an additional 56 pixels of vertical resolution, so in fact more lines of text.
And of course once you go to 2560x1440 or 3840x2160, you either get oodles of space or sharper text, thanks to display scaling.
