The Classic Editor - Notepad.exe

I have come to enjoy an old friend in Notepad, using it from the early windows 3.0 days - its always just worked - small or large files and when it didnt, it was always upgraded without even knowing and it always seemed to meet my needs.

Notepad is as classic as the Charlie Brown Tree!

When testing for the #WindowsInsiders I ran into small error with notepad creating new files - https://twitter.com/murmanz/status/1070691664497324033 and sure enough they identified it as an issue and in 18298 they quickly fixed it up, thanks @jplaanstra - And added a bunch of nice new features - subtle but very nice - See https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-windows-10-19h1-test-build-adds-more-notepad-features-other-tweaks/ for some more details.

This leads to my original thought on how useful and powerful notepad has been and how its always been a IT Pro classic tool. Notepad has always been a great first line editor, just feature rich to get the job done. How many times have you edited HTML in notepad, coded any number of languages where you just needed to do something quick and dirty and just fired up notepad. Edited any number of config files or used notepad to take notes because you couldn't find your OneNote icon quick enough! Lately I tip my hat to the SCCM folks who are too busy to pull cmtrace from someplace not in the path and breakout notepad to read sccm logs - that's a real skill once you get the hang of it! Lets face it, we all have used notepad where it wasn't intended but it was used and got the job done! That really shows the versatility and fundamental nature of this cornerstone utility!

Over the years the fundamental notepad tool just keeps getting more feature rich, its great to see that Microsoft understands the core basic necessity of the tool, leaving the rich enhancements alone to third party tools like Notepad++ /others and letting notepad get better with age - to see a great tool just get a little bit better every time you fire it up and learn some new feature that you never knew even exsisted was built in 3 versions ago!

So how did I create a file when notepad was broken for a stint in 18290 - sometimes you just have to go back to the basics!

When you dont have Edlin, EDT, VI, Pico or Notepad you use DOS!

Thanks for reading!

Murray @murmanz