[stephen_g]

I get the idea, and have worked with people who hold that kind of opinion. But it's getting more and more untenable, if you want to have competitive products. It's the same why you generally just can't use leaded parts anymore - almost everything is surface mount.

ICs are doing so much more these days, that it would just take up too much space, or need whole extra boards to do what a tiny QFN part does. In terms of repair, even the individual transistors (of the few we use these days) are so small that field repair is extremely difficult - it's hard to replace them without a proper lab setup, so we mostly have spares of whole boards or modules for field repairs, and then send the faulty board back to the lab where somebody can repair it with a microscope, hot air rework station etc.