One of the first things I learned as a really young player was the resistor color code. But with older eyes, and the much lighter printing of the colors these days, I just keep a meter handy, and populate one value at a time. Say my board has 12 pullups of 10K each, I'll make sure I have a little stack of 12 resistors checked to be sure they are 10K, then populate all those, then move on to the next value.
I'm still all thru-hole, with my vision issues, SMD is just not in the cards. Magnification is not the problem - I have very limited vision in my right eye so depth perception is off. At least with TH, it's something I am extremely familiar with and I can find the spot to solder - haven't burned a finger yet, or my nose (you don't want to watch me solder...really). I notice this more and more - things I am familiar with, it's as if my depth perception has not altered. Amazing how the brain can compensate. But something unfamiliar - I'll miss the mark a time or two.