[allo37]

It's funny, I work in embedded systems and much of this is still relevant to me. RS-232 itself (as in the specification for the physical layer) isn't used as much, but the underlying UART comms protocol is still alive and well. A Beaglebone dev board, for example, can be booted by uploading the bootloader over XModem.

[koz1000]

And a lot of smaller microcontrollers still use a UART port and serial protocol to reflash the device. It's the lowest common denominator for hardware interface and the simplest thing that works.

[allo37]

Hah, to me flashing an MCU over UART is a luxury. When I first started working with MCUs I needed to use a chip programmer that cost several hundred $ and flashed using a high-voltage (relatively speaking) parallel interface. Then there were serial programmers that used a proprietary protocol to talk to the chip. And then finally we had bootloaders and self-flashing MCUs that made this whole process sane and affordable!

And of course to our ancestors, we're spoiled kids with our electronically erasable ROM ;)

[CableNinja]

I remember being blown away as a modern teen seeing an old EPROM being erased and how to do it. It felt more hacker like than todays "just push a button"

[koz1000]

I worked with erasable EPROMs back in the day. It was a pain in the ass.