I hear you and agree BUT in this day and age that's the way electronics has gone. I will be ensuring that things that are likely to need replacing at some point will be easy to do however such as driver transistors.
I will also be isolating all outputs with optocouplers so in the event of a catastrophic failure, all upstream components should be OK.
I have a few other ideas as well that will make the electronics as servicable and as robust as possible.
Circuit boards that components can easily be replaced, none of this surface mount stuff.
