While I do feel they should've continued the plain old "MacBook" designation for the 13" beyond 2008, I've got to admit the 2009-2012 13" MBP was a solid workhorse for a moderately professional user.
In my experience with that whole line I really feel like only the 17" truly deserved the "pro" moniker since it got better options (processors, matte display) than the others.
The SSD can be replaced. I loved my 2015 MBP to death, but the CPU has not aged well for heavyweight languages like C++ and Swift. Switched to an M1 Air with the same 1 TB of storage and 16 GB of RAM.
In my experience with that whole line I really feel like only the 17" truly deserved the "pro" moniker since it got better options (processors, matte display) than the others.