I’m really looking forward to the new gnome45 because the interface is beautiful, but I’m also a little worried because I don’t know if the Dash to Panel plugin will work.
It will be in Stable when it’s ready. It’s already in Unstable now. 
I don’t see why. It looks just the same to me as it did before, and I guess beauty must be in the eye of the beholder. 
Speaking only from personal experience, Gnome is an ugly little troll – As soon as I try to make it usable (via available extensions) it invariably morphs into a crashing frenzy; sending me on a week-long diagnostics and/or recovery adventure. KDE suits me; until it doesn’t.
I think stable and bug-free software is the most beautiful, is the first, other UI aspects of beauty in second place.
Well, whether it’s going to be bug-free still remains to be seen. 