Good Grief...
how can they 'lose' an application that's hung around since the mid 80's?
Forget Linux GPU support, Microsoft has emitted a new Dev Channel Windows 10 build that fixes a far more serious problem: the disappearing Notepad. Build 20152 arrived overnight and - as well as knocking this hack's test rig out for 90 minutes while it had a good hard think about what the last install had done - initially …
Because their twat-o-meter is full hard over to 'complete wanker' mode and they have to screw around with anything and everything.
If its old and worked thats no good
If its new but is so fucked around with it doesnt work how it used to but we've added 'cool stuff' then thats fine.
Yuk.
someone forgot to finish the 2D FLATTY ADWARE "The Store": version before the update shipped...
(the respons was SUPPOSED to be "it's in The Store" and then, like games, make everyone download the ad-ridden crippled FLUGLY version of what used to be a useful tool...)
But they were caught, and had to quickly put it back while whistling in the air like nothing happened...
I use Nodepad++ a lot, but sometimes its text colour coding* is down right annoying, Sometimes a simple monochrome view is what I want, and MS Notepad does that. (*Yes I'm sure there is probably a config setting in Notepad++ to change this, but life's too short to find out how).
They (being Microsoft) were just testing the water. If they can get people to cough up for Solitaire then why not Notepad as well eh? Roll up, get your Notepad subscription here... only $4.99/month. If they do go down this route they will naturally make it much, much, much harder to install alternatives such as Notepad++.
Cynical? Yep. Nothing Microsoft does these days is done out of the goodness of their heart but to maximise revenue opportunities
It's called job security engineering. If the Microsoft guys were to design their build systems properly and actually know what they are doing, 80% or more of the folks would no longer be needed. Hence the importance of JSE. And Microsoft has always been at the bleeding edge of JSE.
The trouble with that is it's not guaranteed to be on every machine you connect to; whereas for decades you could rely on "win-r notepad enter" and be typing away. It's like vi on any unix-like OS... you might as well learn it as no matter what you _like_ using, you can rely on "vi filename" doing what you expect.
i
Got used to vi on AIX boxes back in the late 90s.
I'm on Linux boxes regularly, so still use it to this day.
I don't even use vim!
Not really an expert with it, but i, /keyword, dd, L-Shift+a seem to get me through.
Other editors seemed to come and go, but as you say, vi is always there (Thankfully!).
:wq
I have been mocked for many years for habitually using vi even though many better editors exist. Ah, but when you're out on site working on a customer's server and none of the fancy editors are available, suddenly an ability to use vi makes you a hero. Not for long of course, but it's nice while it lasts.
"as well as knocking this hack's test rig out for 90 minutes while it had a good hard think about what the last install had done"
How many DevOps release cycles did you miss while your computer was off in lala-land?
Last time I updated Slackware, the system continued compiling my compiler while I read ElReg, kept an eye on IRC, and listened to music, all without skipping a beat.
I can't believe people (especially supposed developers!) still put up with the barriers to productivity that Redmond insists on shipping. I wonder how many man-hours have been wasted, world-wide, with this kind of unnecessary bullshit ... and how many dollars in real-world money have been spent by organizations in the last ten years chasing a usable system based on Redmond code.
,
What a fucking waste. The mind absolutely boggles.
> a programming language
Singular? It would be some time ago.
These days there's JS (and not just inside IE and Edge), VB Script, cmd, and PowerShell. .NET is included so both C# and VB.NET compilers are there.
Add WSL with a distribution and you've got bash etc. as well.
So a very long way from a programming language.
Wow! Was I glad to find out that Notepad is a great washing machine for removing crapped up text formatting, background colors, etc. I've just cleaned up several documents. This is why I read the Reg.
P.S. As an appreciative reader, I offered to let the Reg serve up some ads. But, every other page/session/different browser keeps asking again. So, I just say no now. I emailed the Reg but never got a response. Guess they're better at writing stories than websites.