[lil1729]

A lot of amateur radio HF range projects use what is known as the "manhattan style" construction where, a copper clad board is used as a ground plane, so to speak and then tiny round pads are glued to it, which act as islands. The pads can be made using paper punch of appropriate grade. I have used cheap punch used for cutting paper and have made pads in the past. The parts are then soldered directly to these island pads.

Not sure if these can be applied to digital circuits, perhaps not very easily, since a lot of components are SMD these days, at least in the high speed digital domain.

[makomk]

Modern SMD microcontrollers tend to have pretty fine pin pitches, often in the 1mm ballpark. You really want a proper PCB for those.

[lil1729]

http://www.piclist.com/techref/pcb/manhattan.htm

[toomanybeersies]

I recently soldered a board using a MCU with a 0.5 mm pitch.

[lil1729]

yep, I have done that too, with a third hand and a lens, as I have a bad eye sight.