[derefr]

Notepad stuck around in Windows for so long, despite Wordpad also being built-in, because Notepad was supposed to be for e.g. editing C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT or C:\Windows\System32\hosts.txt in Safe Mode. It was basically supposed to be the /bin/sh to Wordpad's /bin/bash — the thing that'll save you in maintenance mode when the system is so hosed that nothing more complex will launch.

If your computer was working, there was never really supposed to be a reason to invoke Notepad. Programmers were expected to install IDEs or third-party text-editor software. Microsoft's own READMEs have always been .rtfs ever since Windows 95. And so on. For a little while, you might use it to view system log files? But the Windows NT lineage gave Windows an Event subsystem with its own MMC-based console, so even that didn't require Notepad any more.

It's therefore bizarre that Microsoft have decided to "enhance" Notepad into this pseudo-rich-text thing, while also sunsetting Wordpad; when it seems like what they really wanted was to "enhance" Wordpad to also do what Notepad does, while sunsetting Notepad. (Even with full back-compat, they could have done this by making Notepad.exe a stub that launched Wordpad.exe with flags.)