Too much hassle when there are easy cheap alternatives.
Cheap yes, easy no.
Anything that involves soldering is not even remotely comparable to solderless breadboards in terms of easiness for R&D. Nothing beats solderless breadboards for trying different circuits and different part values in hardware quickly and with zero waste.
I disagree, for the reasons I have stated - especially wasted time when (predictably) solderless breadboards don't perform as expected.
Beginners are going to have to learn soldering sometime. "Practicing" while making prototypes is a great way of enhancing their skills before they need to do it on a "real" PCB.
The "zero waste" concept is a red herring. Components soldered on breadboards can be reused: desolder them and put them back in the drawer. I have such components dating from the 1970s! Seriously
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xsmiley.gif.pagespeed.ic.R8GFI-pF6f.png)
But thanks; I've updated the page to trap out the "waste" contention.
It's only when you are settled on a specific circuit and component values that proceeding to soldering to build a working prototype makes sense, or, another scenario, when parasitics of the solderless breadboard make it impossible or too unreasonable to use in a specific case.
Many acknowledged experts jump straight to soldering, well documented examples being Jim Williams, Bob Pease. They do that for a reason. Even experts such as Horowitz and Hill can be caught out.
It requires a lot of experience to predict when parasitics cannot be a problem.
The world of electronics isn't limited by HF and fast digital circuits. And even for those solderless breadboards can be quite usable, as long as you know what you're doing.
Beginners - by definition - don't know what they are doing.
"LF" prototypes sometimes exhibit unexpected "VHF" behaviour, with baffling consequences. I showed one very simple example, another traditional example involves LDOs.
Overall with solderless breadboards it is too easy to get a circuit that
appears to be working, but on closer examination exhibits weird or intermittent behaviour. I hate intermittent behaviour, and like predictable behaviour. Don't you?