I had a MacBook 2014 at work and grew pretty quickly to love it after only ever using Windows. However, the updates turned a perfectly reasonable machine into a much slower one.
I switched to Linux when I left the company and while I ran into issues installing it on both my PC and laptop (not Mac), the end result works perfectly. I think all the digging around has made me better understand computers. A lot of the Linux command line skills are transferable to Mac.
I have a 2013 MacBook Pro with 4 gigs of RAM that I bought with Mavericks and updated it all the way up to Catalina. My GF is using it pretty happily now and it feels reasonably snappy, certainly not "much slower" than I remember it.
I switched to Linux when I left the company and while I ran into issues installing it on both my PC and laptop (not Mac), the end result works perfectly. I think all the digging around has made me better understand computers. A lot of the Linux command line skills are transferable to Mac.