Rivets, and joining from one side only
Where riveting still beats bolting, and what it gives up.
A rivet lets two parts be joined by someone working from one side of the joint alone, because a blind rivet expands and forms its own clamping head on the far side purely through the mechanical action of pulling a central mandrel, with nobody needing access to that far side to hold anything in place, while a bolted joint needs a spanner on one side and something holding the nut still on the other.
A stapler and a needle and thread
A stapler reaches only the near side of the paper it joins, driving the staple through and bending its prongs closed against a small anvil in its own base. Sewing the same sheets together needs the thread pulled right through and knotted on the far face, as a bolt needs its nut held on the far side, and the same split separates riveting from bolting.
A blind rivet arrives as a hollow body threaded onto a central mandrel. A pulling tool draws the mandrel back through the body, forcing the hidden end, the one nobody can reach, to bulge outward into a wide clamping head, after which the mandrel snaps off. All of that is driven by force applied from the accessible side, which makes the rivet the natural choice for a sealed enclosure, a hollow structural section, or any assembly whose far side a hand or a spanner could never follow.
What a rivet gives up
A rivet cannot be undone. Removing one means drilling it out and fitting a new one, so it suits joints meant to be permanent, where one-sided access is either essential or a convenience worth trading reusability for. A structure that will need servicing or dismantling pays for a drilled-out rivet at every visit.
Its clamping force comes from its own flared, deformed shape instead of from elastic stretch, so it cannot be retensioned the way a slightly loose bolt can be given another turn. That shape is also the only evidence of whether it formed properly, since a rivet carries no equivalent of a torque wrench reading. Riveted structures, aircraft skins being the familiar example, are therefore inspected row by row by a trained eye, and a head that came out shorter and less flared than it should gives itself away.
The same fixed clamp makes riveting a poor choice for joints that see large, repeated swings in load. A properly preloaded bolt has an elastic reserve that absorbs those swings, and a rivet, set once and for all when it was formed, has none, so such joints are usually bolted even at the cost of needing access to both sides.