Sidebar v/s Top navigation

If I'm building functionalities for a dashboard in a SaaS tool, I find it convenient to use sidebar navigation. :)

I think Top Navigation is good as a user can see what is the theme of website, what he can browse in it at the moment he opens that website.

I would say it depends on the kind of product you're building. For side panels: Canva, Pitch, Miro have side navigation. The core idea of the product is to do 1 task, and the side panel allows for adding hierarchy - in the form of folders within that task. If the user can do multiple things within a product that are connected but dont necessarily follow a hierarchy, a top panel works better. For eg: Product Hunt

If you are juggling with lots of items to navigate between and the list is always evolving (eg. user adding items or created channels etc) it's better to go with side navigation, but if you can limit items top menu is better. However, there have been cases where I've seen even the top menu has sub-hierarchy and the list is long in those menus. Like "product hunt"; navigation is at the top but since the hierarchy under them is quite limited so make sense to have top navigation

To be honest, there are no ideas in making decisions. It is important that it is convenient to use. I always work with top panels

I tend to go with top navigation, but I use products with both. As long as it's clear, I'm okay either way.