Eagle is dead. KiCAD is certainly the choice, both from starting hobbyists and for high level professionals. Order you PCBs somewhere, order stencil. Buy components yourself, solder yourself, make stencil holder from cardboard. Do not mess with assembly orders unless you’ve learned how it works at home. Get a fan and soldering iron, relly good tweezers (I recommend Tweezerman not made in China, absolutely best gear even though it’s made for other purpose, works for electronics and electron microscopy sample handling).

Really weird fact: AI is useful for converting datasheets into kicad models, sometimes even 3D. Finally some dumb menial task worth of AI - format conversion. That’s that those damn things should be used for.