Grumpy_Mike:
you can write to the chip many times w/o penalty
Yes but you are limited to 8 meaningful writes because without an erase the write process is only one way, normally a one to a zero, but it could be the other way round depending on the way the flash cell is buffered.
I remember manually patching Z80 code on EPROMS with no eraser available. You had to look at the hex dump and figure out how to fix the program by only changing bits from 1 to 0. I didn't do it often, but I have done it.
Kids today...