system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does a computer remember what programs I had open after a power outage?

Wouldn't programs currently running be stored in RAM? In which case shouldn't the RAM flush itself after every reboot?
gpt
Some applications will persist data to non-volatile memory (HDD, SSD).  Office documents, open tabs in a browser, etc.  You're not storing the total DRAM state of a running application, but information that can be used as configuration when it is run again.