If we put enough emphasis on rigorous methods in circuit construction, particularly when it's to be done at the kitchen table, with wire and soldering iron rather than by simply soldering up a PCB, which is much less likely to cause trouble of this sort, though one CAN forget to solder a connection.

As it happens, I produce circuits which, in many cases, never become PCB's. They're one-of-a-kind, or maybe as many as a half dozen, but they're wire-wrapped (because I learned and became accustomed to that technique decades ago) because I can do that in-house, or have someone else do it here and now, and, of course, there are methods to which I've become accustomed over the years that work very well. I do use special boards in those cases where I can, but it's possible to produce a well-behaved circuit on a board, soldered or wire-wrapped, by simple adherence to a few principles.

I could go on and on about how that's to be done.

Unfortunately, most newbies don't come here to ask about how to build their circuits. They build them, however they do it, and then come here to ask why they don't work. Of course, we can seldom tell them, largely because we can't SEE their work. We do sometimes get to SEE their schematics, and even more often, their code. Half of the time, the schematics and/or code are flawed. The rest of the time, it's got to be their construction technique. How can we best help them figure out what they've done wrong? All we can really do is to tell them how they should have done it. I doubt, actually, that we can all even agree on that.

Maybe it's worth some thought, effort, and discussion.

RE