Indeed!

When I was a wee bairn, I never understood why soldering was so difficult so much of the time, until I discovered how important flux was. Slather that stuff on, and 99 percent of your soldering problems go away. In particular I like using the wet liquid kind of flux (like in the flux pens) as opposed to the gelatinous kind. The rosin core built into the soldering wire is just useless, it's worse than either of the above.

Clean up the excess afterward with isopropyl alcohol. My only issue I have these days is, when cleaning up, if I use cotton, or paper towels or tissues, to wipe the surfaces that I'm cleaning, they tend leave "bits" caught on solder joints and on the edges of components. I don't have a good answer for how to clean up without needing to scan carefully for bits of paper towel. Anyone have a good way to clean up the work after fluxing and soldering?