As an electronics hobbyist who operates at an even smaller scale (where the cost of a pushbutton itself is trivial), I could not agree more strongly with this.

As an electronics hobbyist who operates at an even smaller scale (where the cost of a pushbutton itself is trivial), I could not agree more strongly with this. Physical buttons are, counterintuitively, an absolutely massive pain in the butt from a design point of view. I tend to use touch sensitive pads instead. It makes the firmware more complex but the physical design so much simpler.