P.P.S to my previous reply: one other thing you forget, tggzzz: soldering is also a skill that must be acquired and honed. If the first year apprentices had to solder each basic circuit they were learning, we’d be spending half the time soldering, and then debugging their soldering, before they could begin to get to the actual lesson. Plus, when soldered, simple mistakes become harder to fix, and components become harder to reuse. (In an educational setting, that’s a factor, too.) There’s no question that breadboarding is a great solution
for this application.
Note that in the curriculum, construction methodology is its own course. In the theory courses, the students aren’t supposed to be learning/practicing how to solder. (And conversely, in the construction courses, they’re not meant to understand the complex circuits they’re assembling.)
And then somebody dropped some equipment onto the bench with a thump, and you had to figure out which connection had moved. Not my idea of a good use of my time.
If that was enough to cause a connection to move, then the breadboard was junk to begin with, or has been so horribly abused as to have merited throwing out long ago. A high quality breadboard that hasn’t been abused holds onto leads and wires tightly.
Those caveats are important. Ensuring they are valid is non-trivial in the real world.
I really don’t think they are, as long as you’re not
starting with unknown eBay garbage. If you’ve started with a 3M (or Global Specialties, or one of the handful of established high quality manufacturers), it’s easy to notice if it’s gone bad.
There are easy alternatives with better performance and more repeatable results; not using them is somewhat peverse IMNSHO
Nobody is arguing that those construction methods
don’t perform better. But you refuse to acknowledge their downsides, like being much slower to build (especially for a beginner) and costlier (since you’re generally not disassembling them afterwards), and you refuse to acknowledge the benefits of solderless breadboards.
A good engineer knows when to apply a given construction method. And part of getting to that point is experiencing how different methods behave. IM(also NSH)O, bumping into the limitations of breadboarding is itself a useful experience.
Again, remember that you
haven’t been a beginner in a
very long time. Those of us who have, remember the value of, and joy in, being able to plug in a couple of simple components and seeing a circuit come to life for the first time. And how much we learned from blowing up a transistor or LED, and being able to reconnect a wire in two seconds after seeing what we did wrong.
In that context, I don't see any significant difference between experimenting and prototyping.
Then it’s been far too long since you were a beginner.
Not really. I've been a beginner since the 60s - because I am always doing new things that are outside my previous experience.
Being a lifelong learner (which is a good thing) does NOT make you a beginner!! Over the years, you’ve accumulated TONS of knowledge that helps you understand the new things, and eliminate pitfalls that a beginner won’t know about. Experience solidifies the foundational knowledge that is then applicable to new challenges. A beginner simply doesn’t have those, and has to be allowed to accrue it.
And though I assume (hope?) that you meant that comment somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it’s ultimately rather dismissive of
actual beginners.
I use a 40yo Tek 485, despite having more modern scopes. That doesn't mean I would recommend a beginner buys one!
And completely irrelevant, as it’s a completely different type of tool. A new 3M breadboard bought today is identical to a new one made in 1975.
Meanwhile, I’ve relegated most of the fleabay breadboards I originally bought to being little more than soldering jigs. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ 2 ohm contact resistance!
Often it is the varying resistance that causes "effects"!
In a cheapie? Yup. But in a good breadboard like a 3M, it’s pretty darned consistent.
P.S. I edited my post above after you responded to it, FYI.
Noted, understood, accepted. I've done similar things
It was just a heads-up for context, and in case you wanted to address the added point.