[muvlon]

In my head, the levels are exactly swapped. Connecting two wires together reliably is harder than through-hole in my experience. Through-hole PCBs are actually designed for solder, so surface tension basically does your job for you. Also, with the PCB you have a solid surface to push on, whereas with two wires everything's a little bit more loose. Lastly, if you want the connection between the wires to actually be reliable, you're probably looking at splicing, which takes some more skill yet.

[Toutouxc]

Interesting. I guess I see through-hole stuff as more advanced because if a PCB is involved, there’s usually something expensive around there that you can actually damage with a (genuinely!) poor soldering technique. Through-hole or pads, that’s ESPs and drone flight controllers territory for me, or building DIY batteries.

A random frayed power cord, well, you can dump a ton of heat in it and start 6 times over and it won’t really matter. Worst case you replace some isolation or a warped connector.

[skiing_crawling]

Same for me. I find through hole easy and can do it reliable. Soldering 2 wires together...I always mess it up. But its something I rarely do.