So, flying through a build, I accidentally soldered an IC socket in backwards and am having a hell of a time desoldering it. Can I just leave it in backwards and put the IC in normally?
There's no reason to desolder it.
Thanks, Bean!
You might want to put a dab of bright fingernail polish at the proper end of the socket (that is, with respect to the board itself) just to remind yourself.
If only this made your sound backwards, too.
In a few months, they'll wonder when and where the rancorous "IC sockets are/aren't sonically directional" debate started.
ob.useful: even when using sockets with the nifty decoupling cap built in, like these (http://mill-max.com/images/products/pdf/030N.PDF), rotating the socket won't affect anything as long as the right IC goes in with the right orientation to the rest of the circuit. It's a pretty good practice to compare the actual physical circuit to the schematic at reasonably every soldering step anyway.