> Everything is lead-free

Leaded solder is easier to work with for personal projects. Careful hand washing and handling is required, but it's easy.

I also recommend people go to surface mount, but I don't recommend beginners immediately go for expensive microscopes and reflow ovens. Stick to 0806 components or larger to start and you can populate a board without any binocular microscope or magnification as long as your eyesight isn't too bad. I can populate 0402 components without magnification all day long.

For small boards, reflow on one of those cheap hot plates. They're small enough to back in the drawer when you're done.

Surface mount doesn't have to be hard or expensive, unless you're doing designs with ICs that come in very fine pitch packages.

> Leaded solder is easier to work with for personal projects

it really isn't if you use a nice modern lead-free solder. you'll need your iron to be about 20c hotter, but it's not like the early days of lead-free where it'd flow all weird.

Give a shot to the SAC305 mix. It’s a low temperature lead-free alloy, and it’s the one that made me ditch leaded solder definitively. Use more flux and a bit more iron temperature and you’ll never touch leaded solder again. Oh, and it’s available both as a hand-soldering wire reel and solder paste.

The only place I've noticed a difference is for very large components with a lot of thermal mass.