[HN Gopher] Notepad++ is 21 years old
___________________________________________________________________
Notepad++ is 21 years old
Author : thunderbong
Score : 311 points
Date : 2024-11-01 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (learnhub.top)
(TXT) w3m dump (learnhub.top)
| aanet wrote:
| I LOVE Notepad++ !!
|
| It has served me well in those terrible times when you get a new
| PC at work (usually Windows) but it is so locked down by Dept of
| IT that one cannot load anything useful... except a few things
| like browser... or Notepad++
|
| It has saved my a@@ multiple times in one-or-two large consulting
| companies pretending to be technically advanced.
|
| <3 <3
| grugagag wrote:
| Im working in a similar locked down env, and here more recently
| they lock down downloading N++ or doing updates so I have my
| workarounds.
| alkonaut wrote:
| My IT gave us right to run a few things as admin. Among them,
| n++. And guess what, it has a "Run" menu item so you can launch
| any child process. Perfect.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is a great piece of software. I use it often.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I recently looked at some log files (nothing too crazy, somewhere
| between 20 - 50 MB of text data) and much to my surprise the
| recent versions of Visual Studio Code seemed to be smoother than
| Notepad++.
|
| That said, it's a nice toolbox of common text operations, like
| sorting lines, removing duplicates, converting case and
| whitespace symbols and so on. I still use it daily for similar
| tasks, or just some TODO files, config edits and such.
|
| I did look for something a bit more cross platform to replace it
| with and CudaText caught my attention
| (https://cudatext.github.io/) but nothing convincing enough to
| use something else on my Windows computer, or switch away from
| Visual Studio Code or Fleet on my Linux/Mac computers.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _I did look for something a bit more cross platform to
| replace it_
|
| vim. ;) While yes, it has quite a learning curve, the payout
| IMO is ultimately worth it.
|
| But Notepad++ will always have a place in my heart; it was what
| I used for a long time back when I was also still using
| Windows, and it's a solid editor, and leagues better than
| NOTEPAD.EXE. Especially 21 years ago, the landscape was _much_
| different. "DevC++" I think was the other editor I had that
| was competing with it.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| vim is amazing once you learn a couple verbs, visual block
| mode, windows, and the nice special subjects, eg % for
| enclosing parens
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Unfortunately then you will eventually be forced to work in
| environments without it and feel like you just had a brain
| aneurysm due to how insufferably slow and clunky everything
| else is. Ignorance is bliss, just look at all those cute
| commenters here who think notepad++ is the best thing ever.
| "It even supports regexp!" It makes the editor wars feel so
| pointless, but Windows users are adorable.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| I have never encountered an OS distribution that did not
| have vi pre-installed
| frutiger wrote:
| Just checked, Dev-C++ seems to still be going:
| https://www.bloodshed.net.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Oh my god, really? That was my first editor like 20 years
| ago. Haven't used it since then I think.
| ale42 wrote:
| Same here but I had the opposite impression: VS was so laggy it
| was unusable. Maybe it was trying to analyze something in the
| file? Not sure. NPP opened the file without issued and I could
| actually work with it.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Notepad++ was my first editor of my own choice. In the end, not
| something I wanted to keep around, but It's certainly something I
| would recommend to people who are just getting started in IT.
| jimmar wrote:
| I love Notepad++. My top 2 favorite features are macro recording
| and its search/replace (with options for normal, extended, and
| regex). It's fantastic for quickly cleaning up data.
| jftuga wrote:
| I love using it for macros. Do you happen to know if there is
| anything similar for either VS Code or PyCharm?
| grugagag wrote:
| Yes, I used those features too and love them too.
| brassattax wrote:
| My favorite feature is when I try to save something in an admin
| restricted folder and I hadn't started it as admin. It
| seamlessly restarts itself as admin and restores the file I was
| working on. It's magic.
| awestley wrote:
| I can finally take it out for drinks as a thank you.
| augustk wrote:
| Please don't, that will compromise its reliability.
| jeffwask wrote:
| And now I'll go cry in a corner, damn I'm getting old.
| wvenable wrote:
| I admit I don't use Notepad++ to actually write anything -- I use
| it view large files, do complex search & replace, regex, reformat
| files, data manipulation, etc.
|
| I probably use it a couple of times a week but never to write. I
| don't even consider it in competition with tools like VS Code,
| etc.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| Me too! It's my go-to large text file manipulator. It's also
| what I keep open all the time to paste things into since it's
| so easy to open a new tab and it keeps temp files of things i
| haven't saved until i've closed them and told it I don't want
| them saved, so it opens up with a decent history of crap I've
| been using until I'm ready to clear it.
| QuantumSeed wrote:
| For Windows 11 users, the latest Notepad.exe can also pick up
| where you left off the last time the app was closed.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| And offers tabs
| sigseg1v wrote:
| I love it with the exception that one day, when it started
| to lag (my fault for opening up 400+ unsaved tabs), I
| realized there is no "Close All and Don't Save Changes"
| functionality. Clicked the "No" button around 80 times,
| searched for some registry or appdata hack to see if it
| could get rid of the rest which didn't work, and then sadly
| went back to clicking No for the rest. I'll try to avoid
| that in the future.
| LandR wrote:
| Looks like this has changed at some point :)
|
| I just tried this, opened a bunch of tabs and edited the
| text in them all.
|
| Right click tabs, close all to the right, left or close
| all but this.
|
| Then it shows a message box asking to save, click No To
| All.
|
| All tabs closed :)
| sumtechguy wrote:
| It keeps temp files in one of the appdata folders. You
| could just blow them away and it would just remove them
| from the tab list. The issue is do you want to keep that
| stuff or not. Also ctrl-w and n. should work fine too.
| dkwr wrote:
| Does it also offer syntax highlighting? One nice thing
| about Npp is not only the temp files and tabs, but also
| that it offers syntax highlighting if needed. Sometimes
| when viewing a large Json it's nice to paste it in, turn on
| syntax highlighting and finding the information needed.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Except when you try to close it, it asks whether or not you
| want to save the unsaved tab, with a modal, _one per every
| unsaved tab_. It kind of defeats the purpose of this
| feature.
| vel0city wrote:
| That must be some setting for you. It doesn't prompt to
| save on any of my several Windows machines, and I don't
| recall configuring that anywhere.
| wigster wrote:
| yes this is me too mostly. i also love the sort/mark/delete
| marked options for extracting data.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| Same here. Specially back when Atom was a thing, Notepad++
| would always be my "side editor" for any kind of heavy lifting
| (or even heavy-ish - looking back I really ask myself why I
| didn't just use it for everything ^^)
| alyandon wrote:
| It definitely isn't a replacement for VS Code for actual
| programming. However, I'd certainly use npp for a lot more than
| viewing large files and quick editing if it had better LSP,
| remote filesystem, terminal support, etc.
|
| As it stands, I use it frequently - just not for code.
| ozim wrote:
| Basically the same search and replace and most of the time
| reading log files and of course searching in those.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| Based on the products name I think this was the main goal--to
| replace windows' bundled notepad.exe. For me, notepad.exe had
| some ridiculous issue, which I can't remember (I think maybe a
| very low limit on the file size?), that forced me to look for a
| replacement ca. 2005. The other piece of software from that
| time I'm still using is sumatrapdf.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Notepad++ is the single biggest reason I prefer a windows pc over
| a macbook. It's such a no nonsense app with exactly the right mix
| of features and usability. One of these days I'll ditch vs code
| in favour of np++ for all my editing needs.
| timeon wrote:
| It is not Notepad++ but you can still run Sublime Text or
| BBEdit and others (like Zed) on Macos. No need for VS Code.
|
| There is also PSPad on Windows which is similar to Notepad++.
| rickette wrote:
| I consider Textmate the notepad++ for MacOS (it's great, but
| then again I can't stand working on windows).
| aunlead wrote:
| Closest Notepad++ alternative I found on Mac was CotEditor -
| https://github.com/coteditor/CotEditor. Has all the basic
| features apart from plugin support.
| kernal wrote:
| And to celebrate we're rewriting it in Rust /s
| svara wrote:
| And yet, this text editor too loads the whole file into memory
| when you open it. No modern text editor really should do that and
| support files of essentially arbitrary size by loading at most a
| few gigabytes around the cursor.
| asalahli wrote:
| How would you calculate line numbers if you did that?
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| It does have the benefit that if the file changes or is deleted
| then you can carry on working with the old version. (It
| notifies you when this and lets you choose whether to
| reload/close.)
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Wouldn't windows not let you do that if the file is opened
| exclusively? I also assume you can retain a handle to a
| "deleted" file on windows, like you can on *nix machines.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I think you're just restating the same benefit in a
| different way: you can modify or delete a file (or even
| just open it without modifying it) in another process while
| Notepad++ has it open.
| submeta wrote:
| We have it on our work laptops. It's decent. But it does not even
| have markdown editing out of the box. You need to install a
| plugin. I cannot do that without proper rights.
|
| Other than that it's pretty good. Like BBEdit on a Mac.
|
| Edit: I rather miss markdown rendering, not primarily editing.
| Should have been more specific.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| That's the great thing Markdown though - you don't need a
| plugin to edit it anywhere!
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It's unfortunately because they installed it with an admin
| user. If they would have installed in your user context you'd
| be able to. See if your help desk can reinstall it that way for
| you.
| Medox wrote:
| You could try the portable version [1]. Not so easy to update
| afterwards, of course, and plugin installations and updates
| might need some extra steps [2] but having a zipped backup /
| ready-to-go package, with everything configured as desired, can
| come in handy.
|
| [1] https://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-
| SOFTWARE/Office/Suite...
|
| [2] https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/86702
| danielodievich wrote:
| My 17 year old high school senior told me that the suckiest thing
| about their school-issued laptop is lack of Notepad++. I teared
| up and my hacker dad skillboard got another achievement! I told
| him that it has a portable install and this weekend he's getting
| it on via Gdrive upload. Nothing will stop better editor from
| showing up on school machine!
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Simple free software tools like notepad++, 7zip, and vlc should
| really be pre-installed on any school or work device like that,
| especially ones where you can run arbitrary executables.
|
| The amount of random malware run/installed by non-technical
| users falls off a cliff when they don't have to solve these
| problems for themselves.
| bendhoefs wrote:
| I wish it would get LSP support. There are some plugins but they
| seem buggy/ incomplete/ abandoned. It could be a nice lightweight
| alternative to VSCode.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Notepad++ is so based. It's a traditionally well-made native app,
| fast and lean, with a dense and useful interface, which is a
| breath of fresh air amidst a sea of Electron & Co. bloat that
| comprises modern apps.
|
| Also has a nice logo for a FOSS app. Branding is important, even
| for FOSS, which so many unfortunately fail at. If your software
| creation is associated with a foot or a rat, then you're doing it
| wrong.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| In defence of both Xfce and rodents, the software is designed
| to be fast, lean and nimble - just like rats. It's only a
| cultural association with our own, human filth that gives rats
| a bad reputation.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Has anyone built a co-pilot-like plugin for Notepad++ yet? Before
| reading this post, I wasn't even aware that Notepad++ had
| plugins.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Some of my favorite plugins:
|
| - Hex Editor Plus: Gets disabled every update due to
| "instability" but has never caused issues for me.
|
| - XML Tools: Schema validation and XML formatting
|
| - JSON tools
|
| - (Text) Compare
| hambandit wrote:
| I remember my college roommate, around 2010, using Notepad++. I
| assumed it was fairly old at that point given how simple and
| solid it looked. Way to go, Notepad++ for building something
| that's standing the test of time!
| Willish42 wrote:
| Notepad++ was a life saver in my early days of needing to open
| and edit large files without having the tech literacy or
| familiarity required to use an actual IDE. I was a Windows
| "tinkerer" for a long time before learning programming and
| getting into engineering, and I suspect I'm not the only one on
| HN who got started that way. It's probably the first editor I
| used with line numbers, tabs / multiple view panes in one window,
| and customization options.
|
| I can't say I use it as often these days, but it's still
| installed on my PC at home and it's a reliable tool that I think
| back on fondly. Without it, I might not have "leveled up" to more
| advanced tools later on.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I use it every day. Thanks Notepad++ team!
| foresto wrote:
| This means Scintilla (the editor component in Notepad++, Geany,
| and others) is about 25. It was the foundation of my move away
| from proprietary editors like Visual SlickEdit, and served me
| well for more than a few years. I'm glad it's still around.
| joemi wrote:
| Same here. I used SciTE and Notepad++ way back in the day,
| probably 20-ish years ago. They were my first taste of useful
| light-ish weight text editors (with more features than plain
| old Notepad). Since then I no longer use windows as my daily
| driver and ended up settling on Vim, but I'm forever indebted
| to both SciTE and Notepad++ for opening my eyes.
| ompogUe wrote:
| Me, too! Use mostly Jetbrains these days, but we've been
| standing up some windows servers, and putting NPP on them -
| which reminded me of Scintilla: wrote my own turbo-charged IDE
| on top of it ~22 years ago. That secret sauce led to lots of
| work.
| piafraus wrote:
| Does anybody know if the search window is still a new popup
| window?
|
| Something that always made me prefer to go use other editors. Or
| perhaps if incremental search support regular expressions?
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't mind the search popping as a new window. While I'm not
| using ++, I still use the feature when using Find All, and the
| new window expands to show the individual lines in the
| file/folder at once. Looking for each instance with Ctrl-G type
| of searching doesn't require that full window to remain open
| kevinsync wrote:
| I continue to use Notepad++ despite having tried every other
| editor and IDE under the sun. This, of course, drives every
| person completely insane when I explain that my "IDE" is:
|
| - Notepad++ for editing, pretty much stock, no plugins
|
| - command line for git and grep (Console2 or Git Bash)
|
| - File Explorer alongside Everything [0] for navigating files
|
| - Beyond Compare [1] for visual diff/merge
|
| - WinSCP/PuTTY for SFTP/SSH (usually to Linux)
|
| - Synergy [2] for sharing keyboard and mouse between Windows and
| MacOS
|
| I personally enjoy being in all 3 major OS's at the same time,
| and find it helpful to separate concerns to their respective
| applications/interfaces -- it helps me keep a mental geography of
| "where things are" and "what tool is used for which purpose",
| rather than being beholden to a IDE-dictated workflow or tool
| that's obscured behind specific UI patterns.
|
| That said, I'll happily use Handbrake over command-line ffmpeg
| for a lot of things, so obscuring behind UI isn't always a bad
| thing.
|
| Anyways, HUGE RESPECT to Notepad++!
|
| [0] https://www.voidtools.com
|
| [1] https://www.scootersoftware.com
|
| [2] https://symless.com/synergy
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I certainly respect that. Mine is emacs, pretty vanilla. I do
| use magit for git operations.
|
| find/xargs/grep for exploring code, finding definitions, etc.
|
| standard utilities (ls, cp, mv, etc.) in the shell for file
| management
| ryangs wrote:
| What is your pattern for navigating to a function definition
| (as an example of a basic IDE operation that doesn't seem
| supported)? Grep?
| angra_mainyu wrote:
| Before I learned the holy ways of g->d, that was essentially
| what I did (grep -nr).
| kevinsync wrote:
| From NP++, you could just ctrl-shift-f to "find in files" and
| it'll be quick about it, but I personally would grep from the
| root of the project. I usually keep a handful of command line
| tabs open in Console2, one for git, one for grep, one for
| build commands, others that are running local services etc.
| Anyways, the reason for this is the mental map / spatial
| geography of a project .. enough repetition cd'ing through
| folders and seeing file paths while grepping helps me
| visualize actual locations of things, which helps me grasp
| the entire structure of a project.
|
| Meanwhile, in VS Code etc you can just hover over something
| and click to go directly to it, which is cool, but it's kind
| of like teleporting instead of actually driving to the
| destination enough to learn the roads.
|
| I do a similar thing with git PRs -- for example, if you
| build something that follows a bundled pattern (ex. a
| component that has frontend, backend and data-related files,
| plus naming conventions), having a clean + complete reference
| PR to revisit when you make new components helps ensure I
| don't miss anything and stay consistent. I usually view these
| in-browser since Github/Bitbucket/Gitlab all have nice
| interfaces to see what files you need, where they go, how
| they're named, etc.
| freedomben wrote:
| I do the same thing (though with Vim as my editor instead
| of NP++). Grep is seriously underrated. (well technically I
| use my own grep replacement[1] instead for a few reasons,
| but plain old grep can get the job done very well)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/FreedomBen/findref
| jbritton wrote:
| ctags plugin
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > That said, I'll happily use Handbrake over command-line
| ffmpeg for a lot of things, so obscuring behind UI isn't always
| a bad thing.
|
| My cli bogeys are pdftk and imagemagick - both wonderful
| achievements, but I rarely need them, and they get "paged out".
| So there I am using web services that probably are just a GUI
| with pdftk and imagemagick underneath ...
|
| Ah, also a Notepad++ user. Happy 21, time to buy it a (another,
| shh) beer.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I think I'm one of the last people using WSL1. I think everyone
| jumped to WSL2 because 2 is bigger than 1, but they're really
| different things. WSL1 lets me keep my files on the Windows
| side, let's my IDE (PHP storm) remain performant with no Linux
| to Windows file system overhead, but I still get to use all the
| Linux CLI tools. I still pay some overhead for that, but it's
| better than doing it the other way around and paying for every
| keystroke in my IDE.
|
| What I really want is a damn good Terminal/Emulator for Windows
| AND Linux that can run the same set of tools with zero
| overhead. Boggles my mind that everything is slow and janky to
| this day.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Wait what? I'm not a Windows user, so I haven't used any
| version of WSL, but WSL 2 doesn't store the files on the
| Windows side? It seems to me that the whole "easy access to
| your Windows files in a Linux environment" was the point of
| WSL.
| roland35 wrote:
| Wsl 2 can access files in windows, but it is very slow.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| With the benefit of Linux and its filesystem being super
| (natively) fast in WSL2.
|
| What I've very often done is use command line tools like
| compilers, search&replace etc inside WSL2, in a Windows
| terminal. You have the benefits of speed and all the CLI
| tools of the Linux world. And then have the GUIs, like
| vscode, running on Windows. Vscode has its server running
| on the WSL side, so still very good performance.
|
| Best of both worlds, since the GUIs and the CLIs are
| tightly integrated.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > one of the last people using WSL1.
|
| (waves). Yep, it does "the needed".
|
| "2 is bigger than 1" can take a hike.
| augustk wrote:
| MSYS2 is quite decent. I use it everyday at work where I have
| to use MS Windows.
|
| https://www.msys2.org/
| dgfitz wrote:
| Msys2 is really great, I also daily drive it when I'm on a
| windows box.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I was like you until last year. I did all my development from
| Emacs on WSL1, writing mostly Windows-specific code (DCOM). I
| maintained a set of brittle hacks to allow me to drive
| Windows side CMake and MSBuild straight from Emacs, and then
| run LSP on compile commands from Clang tricked into thinking
| it's cross-compiling. It held up surprisingly well.
|
| Eventually, I installed a WSL2 distro so I could run Docker,
| then I had to reimage the machine because corporate reasons,
| and then, with my work involving less Windows-specific code,
| I decided to not recreate my pile of hacks, but start with a
| fresh WSL2 setup. It works well enough, so that's what I use
| now.
|
| FWIW, I always liked WSL1 more. WSL2 is basically just more
| streamlined VirtualBox setup; WSL1 is magic.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Remember Cygwin?
| ale42 wrote:
| I mainly remember (mostly) not wanting to install it
| because of the so many weird things it does, or rather it
| did when I last used it more than a decade ago (including
| strange NTFS ACLs to emulate POSIX permissions).
| i80and wrote:
| I remember Steve Yeggie selling me on it as a better Unix
| than Unix, then getting bogged down in cryptic inexplicable
| failure modes
|
| Really cool technology really early, but I can't say I'm
| nostalgic!
| 725686 wrote:
| Completely off topic, but I was a Linux user for years, then
| I had to use Windows with WSL2, and it was a constant
| struggle. I recently switched to a Mac M3, and oh boy, it is
| a pleasure to use. No more fighting the Windows/WSL divide,
| slowness and command line tools. Also M3 is a really fast
| beast.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Check out MobaXterm, it has a phenomenal X implementation just
| built in.
| nullhole wrote:
| If you haven't already, you should try Total Commander for file
| navigation. It's similar to Notepad++ in that there's a long
| list of reasons why it's good at its task, but it's also just a
| very good example of what desktop Windows software can be like
| when it's done well.
| grujicd wrote:
| TotalCommander is the first thing I install on every Windows,
| and main reason I can't get used to MacOs. Yes, there are
| some replacements, but nothing that's the same as TC.
| grugagag wrote:
| Notepad++ is my daily driver for taking notes, todos, do pastes
| and use new tabs as buffers. It's the most reliable place on my
| work machine, being always found how you left it off. Notepad++
| and WinMerge are my two favorite tools. Integrating Winmerge with
| Visual Studio 2022 was a breath of fresh air, any compares pop up
| outside VS in a WinMerge window, could leave multiple versions
| open, etc. I don't even want to start about by pet peeves with VS
| but many UI/UX features in it are just bad. Unfortunately I have
| to live with it for now.
| elashri wrote:
| I use Sublime Text for that. I usually use it to paste
| something that I want to run but modify it (i.e docker-
| compose.yml) and I use it to write notes during my work and
| store in its buffers my session thinking. When I'm done or want
| to leave for a long time (I move these to obsidian). Also for
| quick edits I like being able to use build-in terminal command
| `subl` (i.e adding something to ~/.bashrc ). It is available
| for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is the fastest program to open
| on all machines I tried before. I don't have a license but I
| think I should get one (they are generous about that and I
| silence myself by saying I'm poor academic researcher).
| grugagag wrote:
| Ive been meaning to try Sublime for a while now. Will try and
| comment my experience at a future time. Thing is N++ never
| dissapointed and if Sublime wins my mindshare Id be having
| some tough decision to make. Also N++ is free and I developed
| plugins for myself. Maybe Sublime is still better, don't know
| for sure.
| elashri wrote:
| I didn't intend this as a comparison. I used Notepad++ for
| sometime along time ago when I was using windows primarily.
| I moved to using Linux and Mac and this in itself would
| mean I cannot use Notepad++ as it is not available on Mac.
| I was just sharing my experience using different tool to a
| similar workflow like you have. Being free and open source
| is good of course but for me Sublime has better integration
| and its UI is better. And it does support Mac.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| The fact that it auto saves any new tab that you filled with
| thoughts, todo's, pieces of logs,... is super handy. When
| rebooting they just appear as unsaved new tabs, as if you never
| closed notepad++. Zero keep effort. To toss, you just close the
| tab and click no.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| When I use windows npp was 1) my editor of choice and 2) my
| scratchpad of choice.
|
| I would just keep pressing ctrl+n whenever I needed a fresh file
| and never close anything.
| adzm wrote:
| One of the things I'm most proud of developing is dark mode for
| notepad++, even though it was a relatively simple contribution.
| the_hoffa wrote:
| My contribution was adding "scrollable tabs" to it way back in
| the day and fixing a nullptr reference .. I did enjoy how
| simple the code was to actually grok and maintain, especially
| compared to some other FOSS projects of the day
| dylan604 wrote:
| For cars/music, 25 years seems to be the accepted definition of
| classic. It's a true sign of you're getting old when the music
| you listened to in your teens is now considered classic. Does
| software have that same definition of 25 years? There's very few
| apps that I can think of that I still use for that long, so
| reaching the status of classic software is one hell of an
| achievement. Abandoned software should not be qualify as classic
| software.
| 1317 wrote:
| Congrats to Notepad++, but this article reads like AI spam to me
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| Agreed. The author being "Michael" with no last name and no
| bio, the lack of any technical description of Notepad++, the
| lack of any comment from Don Ho, etc.
| bmacho wrote:
| I use notepad++ mostly just as a text note keeper. I open a new
| file, write something in it, and it will stay there forever, no
| need to save it.
| interroboink wrote:
| One thing I really like about software is that it can
| theoretically live forever. I know bit rot is real, but with some
| maintenance, and even a quite small community, it can keep
| getting revitalized basically forever.[1]
|
| The field is generally still young, so I look forward to good
| solid software just getting older and older and still working
| well. Makes it worth learning and internalizing.
|
| C is in its 50s, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere (:
|
| Part of what pains me about much modern software, with its
| always-online and tied-to-some-cloud-service nature, is that it
| tends to die. The learning you do goes to waste, when some fickle
| company pulls the plug in the future.
|
| I like to build stuff that _lasts_ , whether it's a cathedral or
| a bazaar, and I like to use stuff that was built in that way,
| too.
|
| [1] Okay, forever is a long time. Maybe some day keyboards will
| be extinct, and that will make keyboard-centric software
| obsolete. Same could be true for screens, or even the broad
| architecture of computing hardware as we know it. But those
| changes tend to happen slowly, and there's time to adapt.
| squidgedcricket wrote:
| I love being a C developer. I'll still be using it when I
| retire, though hopefully mixed with Rust instead of C++.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| My prediction is that C will still be in active use 100 years
| from now.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Probably Java and python will also
| rombuu wrote:
| SQL will definitely be around.
| tmountain wrote:
| Linux will likely still exist and have a team of people
| maintaining it, so the odds are pretty good that you're
| right.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Those things are immortal right until they suddenly die
| without a warning.
|
| In 100 years there will probably be somebody maintaining
| Linux for sentimental reasons. But it probably won't be
| in practical use.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I sincerely think Linux is "too big to fail" at this
| point. Will it morph and evolve into a charmander?
| Probably, but the evolution will be fluid.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It will keep evolving until it's faced with a situation
| where it just can't move on the correct direction.
| Probably because of some social reason, not a technical
| one.
|
| It's hard to imagine this happening to Linux in
| particular because it's ridiculously flexible. But things
| always change.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > One thing I really like about software is that it can
| theoretically live forever... ...The learning you do goes to
| waste, when some fickle company pulls the plug in the future.
|
| I think you could say that software lasts forever _when it 's
| author wants it to_. There is plenty of dead proprietary
| software that dates from before the era of cloud services; it's
| dead because, just like the SaaS company that pulls the plug
| today, nobody thought (or dared) to preserve the source code.
|
| To make sure software really lasts, history shows us that the
| best thing one can do is to release the code as FOSS :)
| thomasjudge wrote:
| And still no Mac version
| geenat wrote:
| I used Notepad++ to ship many projects back in my windows days.
| Thank you.
| mmooss wrote:
| To help many here understand Notepad++, would someone introduce a
| curious Vim user to Notepad++? Please don't make it into what is
| better or worse, but what capabilities does each have that the
| other lacks (not an exhaustive list, of course), what do they
| both have but implement differently, what uses are in Notepad++'s
| wheelhouse, etc?
|
| I've heard of it for years, of course, but I don't really know it
| beyond 'GUI advanced text editor'.
| pletnes wrote:
| If you don't know vim, notepad++ is fast on big files and has
| syntax highlighting for many languages. But vim does both
| better.
|
| Notepad++ is more windows in style with clipboard etc than base
| vim is.
| mmooss wrote:
| It depends on how big 'big' is. Years ago I was working with
| large CSVs - several hundred MB - and Vim took forever. I
| found some other text editors that specialized in extra-large
| files (I wish I remembered the names now), and the one we
| tried worked like magic.
| sigzero wrote:
| UltraEdit is really good with large files.
| pletnes wrote:
| At some point you're in grep/sed/awk/duckdb/streaming data
| land.
| namrog84 wrote:
| I'm not sure if others have it. But notepad++ had a pretty neat
| way to mark lines from search and do various multiline editing
| that I've always enjoyed.
|
| I enjoyed it's transient new file tab without needing to
| specify a file location.
|
| I like its find and findall and count better than other
| editors.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I like its find and findall and count better than other
| editors.
|
| Do other editors miscount?
| g8oz wrote:
| Still haven't found another editor that lets you define a project
| with files from all over the filesystem rather than just from a
| folder. And no VS Code's multi-root projects do not cut it.
| matthewsommer wrote:
| Why not use symlinks (on Linux, not sure of the equivalent on
| Windows)?
| blangk wrote:
| New-Item -type SymbolicLink
| blangk wrote:
| Might actually be itemtype as argument thinking about it
| but get-help should tell you
| hnisoss wrote:
| tedious, error prone, tiring. NPP just works out of the box.
| kapep wrote:
| Not exactly comparable since it's an IDE, but Eclipse had the
| concept of "linked resources" (files or folder that are part of
| the project but stored somewhere else on the file system) since
| at least twenty years.
| KetoManx64 wrote:
| Sublime Text has a "Save Project As" option that will create a
| project with all the files that you have open, wherever they
| are located. When I tried to migrate to other programs that's
| one of the first things I try to do and they never have it.
| ab_io wrote:
| As a Mac user, Notepad++ is the only thing I miss from the
| Windows ecosystem.
| rahen wrote:
| What do you happen to use? I find Sublime Text to be the
| closest alternative.
| netcraft wrote:
| There is this https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
| speedgoose wrote:
| It runs on Wine.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| It runs with difficulty on Wine. Example: I have localization
| for Japanese fonts on my Linux system but it wasn't showing
| up in Notepad++. I love Notepad++, but that was the final
| straw. I have switched to Geany which is missing many
| features from Notepad++, but will display the fonts
| correctly. I'm sure there's a way to get the fonts loaded up
| through Wine, but I've given up.
| irunmyownemail wrote:
| It runs great on Wine, I use it all the time for quick notes
| and todo lists.
| hotsauceror wrote:
| NotePad++ and TaskWarrior are the only software projects I have
| ever donated money to. I wonder if that says more about me, or
| about them.
| krudnicki wrote:
| I am the owner of TimeCamp app that can track usage of desktop
| apps.
|
| 75% of office workers that use Google Chrome use Notepad++ on
| Windows.
| alliao wrote:
| feels like forbidden knowledge... I guess any app devs know
| things like these if their software's used widely enough like
| chrome/steam and your various motherboard software suites and
| crapware installed by laptop makers
| alkh wrote:
| Is there anything similar and lightweight that is cross-
| platform(or at least is available both on Linux and OS X)? I am
| not a Windows user, so that's a secondary priority for me
| bbayles wrote:
| I've used Geany for 10+ years on Linux and Mac. Very similar to
| Notepad++!
| butz wrote:
| Check out NotepadNext ( https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
| ) and Notepadqq ( https://notepadqq.com/s/ ), albeit last one
| is not maintained anymore. SublimeText is of course the most
| lightweight alternative, if you don't mind commercial software.
| SpartanJ wrote:
| I'm working on a multi-platform code editor similar to
| notepad++ and some new editors like Zed, called ecode, that
| tries to be a fresh take on code editors using some modern
| tools and technologies like LSPs. I started working on it after
| using Geany (which was the closest alternative to notepad++ in
| Linux) for many years but finding Geany lacking some essential
| features for my needs. ecode is developed with speed in mind
| and has a very fast startup time. It might be a good fit for
| your search.
|
| [1] https://github.com/SpartanJ/ecode/
| codegeek wrote:
| really really miss Notepad and Notepad++ on macs. No text editor
| comes close to these.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| My running todo list of 5 years is a work.txt on my desktop that
| I always have open in notepad++, and I will never change
| Animats wrote:
| Is there a Linux version? GEdit could use improvement.
| alpb wrote:
| I expected to see some archaic screenshots not gonna lie. The
| article disappointed.
| bsuvc wrote:
| I haven't used Notepad++ since they were exposed for having a CIA
| backdoor, which they "fixed" after it came to light.
|
| https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/v733-fix-cia-hacking-npp-...
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| The existence of a hacked DLL doesn't mean notepad++ had
| anything to do with it.
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