I'm also a big fan of Houdini, though, and would recommend the free edition to anyone wanting to learn. It's the most fully featured piece of free software I've ever used. I almost can't believe that it's free, it's so good!
You have software like 3ds Max, Maya, C4D, Blender and others. And then you have Houdini.
But you can use Blender more procedural with the modifier stack. And there are great add-ons like Boxcutter: https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultim...
Not terribly familiar with how things work in Houdini (and only dabbling in Blender a few times), but that's been compared to it.
There are some great free tutorials here: https://entagma.com/
As the OP said, parametric modelling is what makes Houdini so nice.
And if you want any chance to rework anything in a project - say - 10 years later, exporting to a "baked" format is a dead end.
There's always a trade-off between editability and fidelity with any format. Non-destructive stacks of modifiers bring that trade-off into sharp relief.
The modifier stack is, to a limited extent, a flaccid ersatz for full-blown parametric, but it's light-years away from what Houdini can do.
I do not think it is a big drawback of Blender since other tools such as Maya and 3ds Max are also destructive.
One of the things I most dislike about tools like Blender is that it can be really hard to go back to earlier stages of the process and make adjustments. Most changes are destructive, even though they don't really need to be. I follow lots of digital artists on Twitter and some of them use Houdini, and the kind of stuff they can generate is just mindblowing.
I'd try it out myself if it weren't for the price; I've always been drawn to procedural creation as a bridge between what a person imagines and what they can get a computer to render.