Fully agree with your reasons for sticking with SL my friend.
I for one have just moved on for the very reasons you mention; I managed to condense my workflow into 4 desktops. Also, with a few 3rd-party tools/hacks I've been able to neuter most of the Mountain Lion annoyances. (BetterTouchTool, Bartender, etc)
But every time I perform a "shut down" under ML I do get the nostalgic urge to go back so I'm not completely cured.
I already reduced my Spaces use from 16 to 12 to now 9 Spaces, but I cannot find a way to get even lower ( 4 Spaces is not enough and I like them squared nowadays except those 12 Spaces days).
I tried Total Expose when I tried
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion again, but it is a really poor substitute. And
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion only lived for 12 hours that day until I returned to
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but since I need a new computer anyways, and Refurbished once from 2011 get rarer than ever, I probably have to live with
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.9 at some time anyway. Man, those times suck nowadays. Every Mac OS X iteration since
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther got used by me within two weeks of its release, but since
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion those days are gone. It just shows, that Apple does not care about specialised uses, only those using Faceporn and Titter.