I think people realized that the media-centric 16:9 doesn’t handle the piles of horizontal bars (titlebars, toolbars, tab bars, status bars, taskbars, etc) that compose modern desktop UIs all that well, particularly at traditional laptop resolutions (1920x1080 and its 2x counterparts and below).
Personally I don’t need a ton of width, the most I have side by side on a laptop screen are two code panes in an IDE. If I need any more than that I’m docked at a desk with dual 27” monitors. I would say my sweet spot is 16:10, but I’ve not tried a 5:4 or 3:2 laptop and have never used a 4:3 laptop for dev work, so I don’t know if I’d find those more suitable or not.
Personally I don’t need a ton of width, the most I have side by side on a laptop screen are two code panes in an IDE. If I need any more than that I’m docked at a desk with dual 27” monitors. I would say my sweet spot is 16:10, but I’ve not tried a 5:4 or 3:2 laptop and have never used a 4:3 laptop for dev work, so I don’t know if I’d find those more suitable or not.