The various development boards such as the NodeMCU or Wemos D1 make working with the ESP8266 an absolute breeze ... [Ryan] came up with a slick 3D printed programming jig that uses pogo pins.

The ESP8266 is a chip that turned a lot of heads recently, stuffing a WiFi radio, TCP/IP stack, and all the required bits to get a microcontroller on the Internet into a tiny, $5 module.