What to do with an old MacBook Pro?

I've got a 13" Mid 2012 MBP with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 and 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 of memory that's just not getting the job done anymore.

It's slow.

It spent 3.5 years in a humid, tropical climate as my daily laptop, and has basically been sitting in a desk drawer for the last two years (in a temperate four-season climate) since then as it's been demoted as my backup laptop.

I've reformatted the HD and installed a fresh version of macOS at least 5-10 times in the past to improve its performance. I wiped my HD and tried installing Catalina today and it has taken 8+ hours to install and it's still not finished installing.

The country I'm living in now doesn't have an official Apple Store, so I'm not sure what trade-in options are available.

I'm leaning toward just making it my dev machine and keeping it as lean as possible, but I'm not even sure if it's got the horsepower for that these days. I'm open to other suggestions if anyone's got any.

Thanks.