Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone

sheelagay 27 points 22 comments July 02, 2026
theguptalog.blogspot.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (9 comments)

munk-a

Ah, but does it have a copilot integration? I've heard users don't want tools without copilot integrations.

sonixier

Did you know that HE CREATED TASK MANAGER??

gigel82

Sure, but it's basically a very thin wrapper on the built-in RichEdit control, with some added menus and niceties. Don't get me wrong, it's hundreds of times better than whatever UWP abomination they call Notepad in Windows 11 nowadays (with logins and AI features), but it's not an actual text viewer / editor from scratch.

Tiberium

This person's whole marketing seems to be based on "I built Task Manager", so much that it has become a meme, see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1sl5nv4/task_... (also apparently there's some dark history involved)

deathanatos

When I was younger, I decided I wanted to learn how to write games. I decided I needed to start simple, though, and I thought NOTEPAD.EXE was about the simplest thing out there. (This was in Windows 3.1.) So to learn how NOTEPAD.EXE worked, I opened NOTEPAD.EXE in NOTEPAD.EXE, and spent several hours trying to decipher the symbols' meanings. My first attempt at coding was … unsuccessful.

pdntspa

This is a fork of another tiny text editor written by someone else. So I wouldn't say they 'built' it Honestly this headline reeks of social media clickbait

sachinjoseph

This former Microsoft dev also created a business that scammed people money in the early 2000s by letting them think that their computer is affected by malware: https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/attorney-general-s...

andai

See the author's video here: The Challenge: Can we build Notepad in 3K in assembly language? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG91c7xsNMc

InvisibleUp

I’m not sure why I would want to use this over WINE Notepad, which seems a lot more stable and well-coded.

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