Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone

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)

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...

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.

Did you know that HE CREATED TASK MANAGER??

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

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

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.