If you close/open a lot of apps due to memory constraints then you have to leave the desktop a lot and it's jarring. The start screen makes it slower to launch apps when you have a lot of apps you frequently used due to scrolling. I just want a fast way to launch apps.
You are right, that can be painful. One solution to this might be to just pin your most frequent apps to the taskbar instead?
(browsers/windows explorer/photoshop/whatever you use ) :)
p.s. you can move around the pinned icons on the start screen, move the most frequent more to the left so you don't have to scroll :)