I respectfully disagree, and say that hand soldering is not a dying art. If you’re working on boards on the regular you probably have a soldering iron and use it often.
Yeah, hand-soldering as the means of mass production of consumer electronics devices has (mostly) died out, but the people who actually build and test things, or the people who fix consumer electronics devices, still usually do a lot of soldering.
It's also a necessary skill in a lot of technical hobbies. Modular synthesis by means of DIY modules, the whole mechanical keyboard thing, electric guitar maintenance...
