Manhattan is great for discrete components but doesn't work that well for digital with small smd ICs.

So it's best suited to analog but for digital, prototype boards -such as the one from Mike's Electric Stuff linked in the article- are pretty good for prototypes or one-off products. There were popular methods in the past, like wire-wrapping, but unfortunately, they are no longer favoured. That used to be a good way to build fairly complex digital boards.

Nowadays, going direct to PCB is also a viable solution since they are very cheap and reasonably fast to get.