Precisely, bread-boarding circuits with wires is why I prefer female connectors. Once you have something working and want to take it beyond a one-off prototype

Precisely, bread-boarding circuits with wires is why I prefer female connectors. Once you have something working and want to take it beyond a one-off prototype then you're going to want to build your own custom circuit board anyways, so I really don't see reliability being a huge issue for dev boards. And having an ADC on board for non-critical stuff is still super useful for many projects. For example reading a thermister or LM335 to check the temperature of a water bath in a DIY sous-vide setup would be a great application of a cheap ADC on a Linux-based dev board. You don't need a crazy 24-bit ADC with precision voltage references, etc. just to measure if water is 140 vs 150 degrees F. A simple 10-12 bit ADC is great for many uses.