I'm a software developer and an older laptop is not great for productivity. I have an old Dell Latitude from 2017 and I pumped as much life into it as I could. Bought more RAM, an SSD but despite all that, it's a pain to run the IDEs I need to use for work. I keep it as a backup and work on an M2 Max now.
Same goes with my S.O. who is a Chemist. Older computers are just not ideal for new software.