10 years in the world of electronics and computers is about the same as a century in the development of all other things of the world. Of course it's the waste of money if You don't think that this mony will spent for learning and for self education but not for getting a computer. Usable computer you probably will not get but you'll learn much. The money you spend on education is never wasted or lost.
I only bought it to learn about macOS. I never intended on this being my main laptop or reselling it.
I sold my gaming pc because i needed money, i got a mid 2012 15" from my dad (Only for using) because he had one laying around, Currently running this on Monterey with a 512GB Samsung SSD and 8GB ram and i must say it runs really smoothly, almost as fast as modern macbooks with intel chips. If you want to do some heavy work like video editing or any general cpu/gpu heavy apps then straight up no, otherwise go for it, upgrade the ram throw in a SSD and you have a perfectly usable macbook. If you want to run newer versions of MacOS i reccommend OpenCore Legacy Patcher.
I've been there several times. I just got a small dell gaming laptop after selling my gaming desktop recently and I refuse to sell it. I thought about using OpenCore, but I'm not sure if this MacBook will handle it. I would like to get it to Bug Sur if I could. If I need to do video editing I will use my gaming laptop. I'll get some more ram and an SSD to tweak it and start playing around with it.
So, how did it all end up ? I can say, no worries, the 2011 models run smooth with OpenCore/Monterey, I upgrade these a lot 1.) Insert cheap 120GB SSD (20$) 2.) Insert 16GB of RAM (50-70$) (8 is enough though) 3.) Install MacOS Monterey via OpenCore Patcher (free) With Monterey its more than enough for youtube, older photoshops like CS6 and streaming Netflix & Co. Many (older) out oif the ordinary games can be played on it as well, if you google around a bit. Quite the smooth experience, if you dont mind the 20 seconds+ boot time. Is it worth to keep 10 year old Macbooks alive ? Defenitely ! Is it worth another 100$ investment ? You decide.