I first learned about Rhino (pre 1.0) on the Macromedia Extreme 3D newsgroup, some time around 1996/97. Extreme 3D was a Bézier spline based modeler, interesting in concept, but horribly bug ridden (lots of crashes, boolean operations often failed). Rhino just worked, and still does.

Unfortunately, the price of Rhino for hobbyists is quite steep, and so it’s hard to convince others to get into Rhino and collaborate on projects. That’s why I advocate a maker edition.