No worries, friend!
I used the three button system for a few years, but I think my phone got too big to comfortably reach the correct button every time. Right now, the Back button in Connect is more than two inches farther than my thumb can reach without having to juggle the phone. The swipe up home, swipe arc to "alt+tab", and swipe from edge to go back were easy transitions for me. I have used mouse gestures in my browsers for decades, and with limited plugin success in other apps/desktops. I prefer a swipe keyboard on mobile.
The buttons feel old-fashioned to me now, and when I see people use them I assume they aren't aware that they have a choice. I do use a third party launcher (Nova, but prevented from updating since they got bought) because I hated and therefore only briefly used the google launcher. Maybe my gestures are better/different than stock. I don't recall.
I can swipe up or down on app shortcuts to open different apps or open menus or pull down the notifications. I can swipe on open space in different directions to open different settings menus. Nova lets me search, map, share, print, call, message, and more with a variety of configurable gestures.
It's been very comfortable for me!