Hand soldering of surface mount components is a bread-and-butter task for anyone working with electronics in 2024. So many devices are simply no longer available in the older through-hole formats ...

Electronics components are steadily moving ... providing various techniques to help in soldering. The boards have practice “stalks” of surface mount component pads, so that folks can practice ...

More importantly, I got comfortable handling a soldering iron without the pressure of ruining a valuable component. Through-hole technology (THT) is much more forgiving than surface-mount devices ...