obligatory WM simping
Personally would go for a WM. It won't break or have disappointing updates, ever. Also the program-ability and keybindings make my computer life much smoother.
I have xmonad right now, which works fine, and was an excuse to use Haskell, an impermanent but linguistically rich playground.
- Serious from-ground-up start
A slow changing do-it-yourself version would be dwm, because it is purely in C and probably the smallest codebase out there for WMs. But, it has to be significantly patched to not be buggy. Suckless devs have software that is good for system software education, due to their philosophy of code simplicity over interface simplicity. [It is a dumb philosophy to have in general for many engineers, I think. Interface minimalism is basic systems engineering/science now, and works. Computers/electronics are much more competent and advanced now than in the 1970s. This would never happen if we all did the suckless style.] But at least dwm will work about the same for decades to come.
- Learn by immersion
A dwm derivative like awesomewm would also be a good middle path, if you want something immediately working but also still easy to modify. Lua is also very easy to learn, and can be treated like an extra syntax layer for C.
