Agree on most parts. I would say you can learn to love 0603 and even 0402 if you have the right equipment. You need a proper stereo zoom microscope and then everything is big, and smaller components can save a lot of space. But don't go there until you've done the bigger stuff and actually felt a need for more room. Definitely 1206 and 0805 are plenty fine for people who aren't super in to it.
Another hard lesson I have learned is that PCB assemblers lie. Even supposedly reputable community friendly ones. If they can save money by swapping out a component for unknown alternatives, there's some nonzero chance that will happen.
I was a solder monkey for a summer a few years back, and all I had was a magnifying glass lamp [1], I was soldering resistors down to 0603.
Last semester at university I did a hardware design course (sort of by accident), at the lab, they had a stereoscopic microscope similar to [2]. I never realised what I was missing out on until I used one, apparently they're up to 10 grand a pop, so I can see why my old work didn't have one, being a pretty small shop.
I've seen that style but never used them. I will say that a $200 AmScope is well worth the investment. Not as nice as a high quality microscope, but vastly superior to a magnifier.
> If they can save money by swapping out a component for unknown alternatives, there's some nonzero chance that will happen.
Yeah, I don't tend to go full turnkey unless I'm doing everything in China. At which point, I fully expect that they're going to use the cheapest, crappiest components they can find, and I'm going to just have to deal with it.
Normally, I buy the components and then ship them if I'm using a US assembly house.
Another hard lesson I have learned is that PCB assemblers lie. Even supposedly reputable community friendly ones. If they can save money by swapping out a component for unknown alternatives, there's some nonzero chance that will happen.