Nice board, but having solder mask on the outer row hides the fact that they are interconnected. It cost me 2 hours of resoldering as I used the outer row to feed all incoming conn...

Nice board, but having solder mask on the outer row hides the fact that they are interconnected. It cost me 2 hours of resoldering as I used the outer row to feed all incoming connections (many). And this project was on a tight timeline. You could simply just remove the solder mask and it would be obvious to everyone. Often proto boards are used for prototypes that aren't hobbies. So time is important, and the boards are cut down to fit in a specific space. Cutting a corner from the board leave little pads to use. The boards are typically used without reading user manual first, or coming to this website or looking at the PCB layout. So it is important to make it intuitive.