E-waste prevention is hella important. It's a tough situation though. I think for a board that goes out in the public, even at a prototyping level, it's important to know the chip you have is not tampered with. I once wanted to make a little people counter at a university campus with an ESP8266. I simply couldn't make sure it's resilient against some CS students poking at it.
It takes little skill, 15USD soldering iron to solder 4-5 through holes wires, connect 10 usd programmer and flash a new firmware.
Investing in a (de)soldering station, with the risk of pulling all the neighboring components, breadboard/something to plugin your new controller or memory into for programming and what not? I’m not sure if I’d go through that trouble
Yes, but this I think is a bit sad. Once you have proper hard to crack security a smart kid from CS won't find it hidden decide to hack it and write blog post about it how he has done it. As long as it is not something dangerous sometimes having less security is better
