Well surface mount is a great choice for sure. Not so much hard to solder those on a board. If you have a small tip + smal solder (.0020) and solder flux, everything can be done with a bit of patience.

BUT some will also prefer to use solder paste and cook it inside a oven or with a fine nose heat-gun too. For SOIC i'll use small solder + flux. But for "fine pitch" one i'll use Solder Paste like Kester R276SR.