I still remember when I was playing around with parallel port as an EE, USB was both exciting and annoying. You always have to plug it in three times to get it right. While it was many times faster the Spec IIRC was 200 page long. Manageable but far more complicated than Parallel Port. When USB 2.0 arrives IIRC it was 550 pages and I thought how is anyone going to understand all these.

And then it was my story on looking into reversible plug ( USB-C ) way ahead of its time.

It was around 2000 when I really felt computer as a whole is so abstracted I longer have a good mental model of how any thing works. Both in software and hardware. It was just we pass it to this sub system and hope it works.

Over time, I've come to realize that USB is a triumph of marketing and compatibility rather than tech.

Faster data rate(FireWire400, 800), isochronous transfers(FireWire) full duplex(FireWire800), and reversible plugs(Thunderbolt) were all available elsewhere much earlier but USB gives you them all through the same socket.

Not mention in the article was the birth of the thumb drive or “USB stick”. For me at the time that felt like a huge step up from the floppy disk, heaps more memory space, faster transfers and a device that was so easy to plug in at a size that could be added to a keyring.

Anyone have stories of their first USB stick?