Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

os platforms

Rolling back the years and the bloat for veteran text editor

Microsoft's habit of adding unnecessary features to Notepad is a symptom of broader bloating in the Windows codebase. But it is possible to go back to basics with a version of the editor that fits in less than 3 kilobytes.

Printing in Windows is kind of spooky. It's one of those subsystems that feels like you're opening a hatch in the floor and you discover a second operating system underneath

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer comes from an era at Microsoft when Notepad handled the simple stuff, and WordPad handled everything else. "We had some clear rules," said the Task Manager author on his YouTube channel, Dave's Garage. "Notepad was for plain text. WordPad was for RTF. And we were taught how important it was to never cross the streams.

"So, Notepad stayed lean. WordPad got the...

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