Hi Erik,

The worst example of this that I ever encountered was for a fire alarm. Maybe you recall the old radio transmitters you used to see on the outside of buildings, or on public utility poles, red in color and shaped like a firehouse. When triggered they transmitted a code number to a reveiver in the local fire station, which the dispatcher could associate with a physical location. I had the displeasure of installing one of these for a customer back in the early 1980s.

Apparently the manufacturer also thought like Justin, et al, that once it was configured it would never need to be changed, and that soldering bridges was the most reliable. There was a grid, a 2 dimensional array, of pads on both sides of the circuit board, with no plating in the holes. To "program" the thing you had to solder bits of wire in the appropriate holes, making sure to solder both sides.

There's a reason those things have disappeared. I'll stand by my "perspective," that this is not a good practice.

Joe