You can still open any of your recent projects from the startup menu, or none at all if you just want to dive right in, so it is not actually a major departure in terms of functionality from this point of view. This makes Visual Studio 2019 feel faster initially, as it only has to load a lighter menu as opposed to the fully-fledged interface.
With its predecessor, you would get straight to the main interface, where you'd be typically greeted with a startup tab containing the list of most-recently-used projects.
The user interface has been updated in Visual Studio 2019, with a new startup menu showing right after you launch the IDE.
