Amateurs! It is a sign of a bad master who blames the tools.

I see growing up in a Soviet Bloc country was a huge benefit. You learn to make do with what you have. In my case, with the only flux available, colophony (rosin). Even that only available in music shops (for violin strings), not as a flux.

An iron? You sissies are used to temperature controlled soldering stations. All I had for the first 10 years of my hobby electronics was a transformer iron. We made our own wire loops for the tips. Here is a shot of what I learned to solder with:



The iron is the original one I bought for my own hard earned cash as a teenager almost 40 years ago. It is still going strong. The rosin (here labelled "kalafonia" as it of a Polish origin) is from eBay. The blobs of tin solder are leftovers from when we had a plumber in the house.

If this is all you have, that really teaches you how to solder
Shame my eyes are not what they used to be and thus my hobbyist days are pretty much over. I can barely see the tiny components. Even the classic ones, through the hole, with the 2.54 mm pitch.