Anecdote, but I started in modding and made some amazing friendships through it as well as honed my abstract reasoning I use for programming professionally now.

Anecdote, but I started in modding and made some amazing friendships through it as well as honed my abstract reasoning I use for programming professionally now. There definitely social benefits that can outweigh the more concrete software == value and time trade-off benefits, but I find communities that are "worth" it _much_ harder to find these days.