Ballistics of a caliber won't help you much if you are not comfortable with the pistol to shoot it accurately or can't practice often enough because ammunition cost is too high.
A good gun is the gun you can shoot accurately and fast. That's the reason why many recommend 9mm for someone new to shooting as most shooters can comfortably manage the 9mm recoil and afford to shoot often due to lower ammunition cost.
Unless you want a highly concealable pistol, compact models are less accurate and have snappier recoil than full size models with shorter sight radius that result in less accuracy.
Don't buy into much of internet forum hype/fanfare as people will post according to what they want/have.
I personally witnessed an accidental discharge of 45ACP HydraShok JHP out of short barreled compact and it went through:
A sheetrock interior wall +
exterior stucco wall +
Traveled about 150 feet +
through another Exterior stucco wall +
another layer of sheetrock +
and got embedded inside the wooden sofa frame several inches deep (we dug out the bullet).
I had new respect for the heavy and slow 45 bullet after that day.