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40 years long enough for you?

No, at age 50 it would be closer to 45 years ago that I first soldered copper plumbing.
It was the summer my younger brother was born (one of 'em) and I spent a week or so at my grandparents.
The original "Willie Green" was a plumber/blacksmith by trade, and head maintenance foreman at a factory that manufactured valves and pipe fittings. Had an unimaginable assortment of professional plumbing tools down on his basement workbench. Of course, the technology was somewhat different back then. Didn't have the disposable propane canisters for doing the soldering, the old-timers had gasoline blowtorches with a little pump on the side to provide pressure.
(They make interesting antiques nowadays, but please don't attempt to ever use one. They're just too damn dangerous.)

That was also the summer he began teaching me how to fish.
Grandpa didn't teach me anything about cast-iron pipe, oakum and lead until I was older.

Sorry to hear that you're having difficulty with copper.
But there is a lot of shoddy/cheap workmanship nowadays.

We here in east central Illinois had copper pipe develop pin holes at about 25 years. The first time I replaced the failed piece (main supply, cold water)with copper. A few years later, the hot water system turned into a sieve and I replaced it with plastic. No leaks in any of the plastic in 10-15 years. The Army has had similar problems at least one base in the southeast. Our lab did a study & determined that the problem was inadequate cleaning of flux remaining after the solder job (on the inside of the pipe). I couldn't really tell: The symptoms were failure near a joint. My conclusion had been that it was cavitation since the solder job seemed to be lumpy on the inside. Could have been flux, but my thoughts were that the flux would be washed off for the residents' drinking enjoyment.