After my previous MacBooks became buggier and less responsive after updating, I decided to abstain from updating altogether. I'm still on El Capitan, and while there are some bugs and rather baffling programs (z.B. the updated Disk Utility), they are far and few between compared to the High Sierra experience on my other computers. Perhaps you could consider downgrading?
That's not really a sustainable solution, though. At some point, 3rd party developers quit supporting old systems and Apple quits issuing security patches.
It depends on what you do. I have a friend still happily running SL. He's curious about the new version of Lightroom, but still using the old version just fine.
A few years ago, Google integrated a messaging service called Google Talk into Gmail. It was "the little box on the left hand side", as well as a mobile app.
A few years later, Google rebranded Talk as Hangouts with a few new features, but for some inane reason left Talk available as a hidden option for those who wanted to use it over Hangouts.
Then, just because they felt like it, Google decided to integrate Google Voice, an online phone and text service, into Google Hangouts. This allowed you to make calls or send texts from the Hangouts app to regular phone numbers. To make matters even more confusing, Hangouts also served as an SMS app preinstalled on Nexus phones, which allowed this one app to send texts using Hangouts, Google Voice, or SMS.
Because Google has an unhealthily short attention span, they then decided to create an SMS-only app, which was intended to replace the SMS functionality of the Hangouts app. It seems that Google forgot they still had SMS functionality within the Hangouts app until now, and are finally removing it.
One would hope that was the end of it, but Google just couldn't make up its mind and released two new messaging and video calling apps, Allo and Duo respectively. Nobody knows what these are for, since Hangouts already has both of these features. They brought nothing new to the table and now are mostly unused.
We can only hope that Google decides to focus on one product sometime in the future, but that seems optimistic. For now, Hangouts is their priority, but I imagine that they'll be releasing a new messaging platform in the next year or two.
I'd just like to say a quick thanks for creating REPL.it. I don't personally use it, but many of my classmates do and it's a very nice environment for development within the browser.
I've washed my micro-usb cable in the laundry more times than I can count, and it still works absolutely fine. I'm not sure how these cables are broken by normal use.
Still, losing those functions is an issue. When it rains, my old Town & Country's power steering stops working and turns become difficult. I would hate to be driving and suddenly have it cut out on me, say, when I'm making a turn, or even just switching a few lanes.
