I think that's how so many people lull themselves into complacent belief that they have a suitable solution whatever their problem is, when, in reality, they have no way of knowing what they have.

The combination of these solderless breadboards, a lack of proper test equipment, and insufficient understanding of what could really be going on leads the typical experimenter down the path ... but it's a path to nowhere.

Some people take great pains to construct circuits on these solderless breadboards, in such a way that they're minimally at risk of being "disturbed" in normal use or storage, and I even know one guy who had PCB's made up to match the contact arrangement on a "breadboard" so that he could make permanent what's, at best, a temporary solution. I don't know how that worked out for him, however.

I look back on the old-days' practice of point-to-point soldering connections on analog circuits on a perfboard, often one with a ground plane, and wire-wrapping digital circuits with some misgivings about whether the past two decades have brought us any progress in the area of prototyping. Personally, I still do it the old way. The only reason I use those solderless breadboards once or twice every three years is because I remember how costly they were, 30 years ago. I should probably throw them out.

RE