window resize above dock everytime I change between opened

Hi everyone. I have been researching this question for the past few days and I can't seem to find the answer.

I recently changed from Windows to Mac OS so I'm not all too familiar with this operating system yet.

I bought the MacBook Pro 14" M2. I'm trying to use as much of the screen space as possible. I like hiding and showing the Dock automatically so I use every inch of screen available. My problem is that I don't like using Full-Screen mode as it creates individual desktops (I don't need those), and I have multiple apps and windows opened at every time. I'm trying to have every window set at Maximized size or Zoom size (not Full-Screen), but every time I change App/Window the new App/Window will resize to fit the dock below, thus I can see the previous App below (behind the dock). Then if I change again to the previous app it will resize to fit the dock below, and so on. I need help because this is driving me crazy! I want to have every window maximized size fixed so when I use the Dock it doesn't resizes to fit it.