I just wonder, how is it possible to have 124000 employees, yet leave such an important application untouched for so many years? The line ending thing is really important, but one could argue that MS haven’t cared for non-Windows systems, but Notepad has also been broken in other ways; ctrl+backspace inserts a square instead of deleting a word, for example.
MS exhibits this behavior towards other important apps too. Explorer.exe still doesn’t use the “new” APIs to support paths more than a couple hundred characters, meaning people end up with folders they can’t delete using Explorer. Explorer’s text input fields also insert a square when you hit ctrl+backspace, just like Notepad. CMD.exe just recently was updated to let the window be maximized.
I should specify why Notepad is such an important application, because it might not be obvious; everyone who needs a text editor just downloads Atom/VS Code/Sublime/Notepad++, right?
No. There’s lots of people who aren’t programmers, who usually don’t need a text editor, but need to change a config file from time to time. Most people who install mods for games probably need to change a config file, or people who want to play a game but have a slightly unorthodox setup (surprisingly many games hide away settings like disabling the FPS lock in some INI file instead of exposing it through the GUI). Or maybe you just need somewhere to write a Reddit/Lobsters/HN comment or post that’s slightly longer than what’s comfortable to type in the text box. Maybe you need to reboot into BIOS to see some information, and want to save your draft without posting the comment yet. These are the people Notepad is for, and while it’s not important that Notepad is good for those uses, it’s important that it’s not broken.
I often use Notepad for anything that I’m looking at quickly and likely don’t have to interact with. “What’s in this file?” etc. It starts so fast compared to those other editors. it’s not tabbed (yet), so it’s not taking over what ever content I have open. It never starts maximized for me and that creates a mental shift for me that means it’s temporary.
Yeah, especially now that Electron-based editors which have to start an entire instance of Chromium before you get to do anything are so popular, having a really lightweight editor to just check the content of a file and maybe change a value is nice.
Most of the time when I need to do that I’m in Linux, so I just open vim in my popup terminal, but I occasionally use Notepad on windows (and then regret it once I need to delete a couple of words and just insert squares instead).
I used to use Notepad for looking at untrustworthy stuff since it was easy to sandbox and already light on resources. I also used it as a default editor since it was on every system. WordPad for memos or official looking stuff where possible since RTF was super-light compared to MS Word. Also easier to sandbox.
My first thought seeing it was “Ah, I remember that bug I ran into in high school… 25 years ago.” I guess updating it wouldn’t move a meaningful business metric and their users enjoyed the world’s most robust third-party software market. But few users edited between operating systems, so it wasn’t broken for the users with light editing needs.
Mentioned in the comments of the post, they have also fixed enabling word wrap and showing the status bar at the same time. I was always confused as to why those two settings were intermingled with each other.
I just wonder, how is it possible to have 124000 employees, yet leave such an important application untouched for so many years? The line ending thing is really important, but one could argue that MS haven’t cared for non-Windows systems, but Notepad has also been broken in other ways; ctrl+backspace inserts a square instead of deleting a word, for example.
MS exhibits this behavior towards other important apps too. Explorer.exe still doesn’t use the “new” APIs to support paths more than a couple hundred characters, meaning people end up with folders they can’t delete using Explorer. Explorer’s text input fields also insert a square when you hit ctrl+backspace, just like Notepad. CMD.exe just recently was updated to let the window be maximized.
I should specify why Notepad is such an important application, because it might not be obvious; everyone who needs a text editor just downloads Atom/VS Code/Sublime/Notepad++, right?
No. There’s lots of people who aren’t programmers, who usually don’t need a text editor, but need to change a config file from time to time. Most people who install mods for games probably need to change a config file, or people who want to play a game but have a slightly unorthodox setup (surprisingly many games hide away settings like disabling the FPS lock in some INI file instead of exposing it through the GUI). Or maybe you just need somewhere to write a Reddit/Lobsters/HN comment or post that’s slightly longer than what’s comfortable to type in the text box. Maybe you need to reboot into BIOS to see some information, and want to save your draft without posting the comment yet. These are the people Notepad is for, and while it’s not important that Notepad is good for those uses, it’s important that it’s not broken.
I often use Notepad for anything that I’m looking at quickly and likely don’t have to interact with. “What’s in this file?” etc. It starts so fast compared to those other editors. it’s not tabbed (yet), so it’s not taking over what ever content I have open. It never starts maximized for me and that creates a mental shift for me that means it’s temporary.
Yeah, especially now that Electron-based editors which have to start an entire instance of Chromium before you get to do anything are so popular, having a really lightweight editor to just check the content of a file and maybe change a value is nice.
Most of the time when I need to do that I’m in Linux, so I just open vim in my popup terminal, but I occasionally use Notepad on windows (and then regret it once I need to delete a couple of words and just insert squares instead).
Vim/Linux is a great comparison actually. I use notepad the same way I use cat, less, nano or vim(default, uncustomized) in the terminal.
I used to use Notepad for looking at untrustworthy stuff since it was easy to sandbox and already light on resources. I also used it as a default editor since it was on every system. WordPad for memos or official looking stuff where possible since RTF was super-light compared to MS Word. Also easier to sandbox.
My first thought seeing it was “Ah, I remember that bug I ran into in high school… 25 years ago.” I guess updating it wouldn’t move a meaningful business metric and their users enjoyed the world’s most robust third-party software market. But few users edited between operating systems, so it wasn’t broken for the users with light editing needs.
Mentioned in the comments of the post, they have also fixed enabling word wrap and showing the status bar at the same time. I was always confused as to why those two settings were intermingled with each other.
Don’t know what to think. Flogging a dead horse or resurrecting a dead horse
Definitely necrhorsemancy
Equinecromancy? Perhaps?
Resurrecting a horse corpse so it can then be flogged?