Quoted from snakesnsparklers:+1. Love the weebly NVRAMs. Never used the MPU, but I think it's a nice touch that he included DIP holes for the surface mount chips if you ever need to replace one.
or if the assembly house can't source the SMT chip give me flexibility to do TH in socket. But yeah, being able to replace the SMT chip without desoldering is the main idea though. Just carefully cut it out with sharp flush snips and you can fit an IC socket without desoldering.