Dale proposed solderless breadboard.

My comments: I have used and am using $SUBJ for prototyping. But never was
a longer coil of rope offered to a newbie than the average breadboard. In
transistor (bipolar) times, this was a good solution. Now you have CMOS
inputs everywhere. You mentioned running oscillators without caps (works
here too). There are also things 'running' on a breadboard that
shouldn't/won't under normal conditions (at least not without adding 30-40
22pF capacitors into the circuit). Imho, putting CMOS parts into a
breadboard is an art. I use it with CD4xxx series chips, PICs and Atmel
and other micros and I invariably have trouble with open inputs picking up
adjacent signals or mains hum from the desk (wooden), opamp circuits doing
whatever they please and so on. It usually takes a while to find the
problem and I cannot say that it helps me very much to work out
prototypes. I'm a great fan of 'bug style' soldered prototypes, even with
SMD parts, for that and other reasons.

So unless you have an electrically clean environment to work in and warn
the newbies so the gremlins don't disgust him early I think that a
breadboard is just a long rope ... however it could be the right thing for
pre-programmed pics and non-low signal circuits (like a blinking led). I
can say that ICSPing a PIC in a breadboard works fine. Having short
circuit proof programmers is very helpful ;-).

Peter

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