Did you have to swap any hardware to continue using it? I have a 2012 macbook pro but had to install Linux since newer versions of MacOS stopped supporting the underlying hardware.
I'm using a 2012 macbook pro as well. I put in 16gb of ram but im having a hard time finding a good replacement battery for it.
macOS has dropped support for models built in 2017 (and older); for most consumers, using Apple software from the 2010 era is a very bad idea.
For my use case it is perfectly fine but for some its a valid issue.