The world has gone to surface-mount technology, no longer intended to be soldered by hand. The size is reduced to allow higher circuit density on boards in a smaller amount of space. The package is flat with no leads, once again to reduce space but also to limit inductance of the pins, etc. The board is set up with pads, which are covered at the assembly house with solder paste. The component is then grabbed out of its tape by a robot and set down on the paste, which holds it in place. The paste is made up of flux and tiny beads of solder. The whole board is run through an oven and the paste melts--The flux burns off and the solder beads melt, soldering the flat pads on the bottom of the chip to the pads on the PCB.
As mentioned before, welcome to the future! Through-hole technology is all but obsolete for professional applications--90% of the circuitry I design and create PCBs for is surface mount. We don't really hand-solder here, we simply send the designs to the assembly house (in the case of the company I work for, one of our vendors manufactures the PCB and assembles it for us). SMD is hands-off and very easy for machines to build. Through-hole is more difficult to work with in mass production, making it practically obsolete in the industry.