nodemcu is a variant of esp8266. here is a great case from thingiverse[1] that you can get printed on 3dhubs for cheap. the case design lets you avoid soldering, the gpio feet just sink into the case, and make contact with any wires you want. not sure how solid this is compared to soldering, but i think for most use cases it's fine, and keeps things very simple.

as others have said, those days are over. micropython with esp8266 is insanely easy[2].

1. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1128026 2. https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp8266