You don't really have a choice if you wanna use high quality SMD parts, like a SOT-3 and a LQFP 32 or something.

------

That being said, there is a lot you can do with hand wiring and DIP parts. And Microchip still makes PDIP uC like AVR DD, ATtiny, MCP6002, and other important parts for projects.

So PDIP / through hole is still alive, but you gotta set your expectations way low. All the MOSFETs and OpAmps and such are just worse, all good parts these days are seemingly surface mount only.