Those little breakout boards are such a liberation for us oldsters who can't handle the tiny little surface mount components. I've gotten stuff well into development with an ExpressPCB loaded with breakout boards, and the engineers can turn it into a real board with real code in a jiffy while the prototype is being used for testing.
Oh, don't get me wrong, the Sparkfun and Adafruit breakout boards are indeed a boon for prototyping. It's just that many hobbyists (myself included) get as far as the prototype working as intended, and call it a day. And with "Sparkfun spaghetti" and "Adafruit anarchy" I now have phrases to describe what the inside of those prototypes often look like.
