it's embarrassing that this is a big deal.

I was hoping it was for better handling of tab characters, like setting up custom display indents or tab display pseudo-characters.

I'd like to be able to praise MS for adding a good feature, even when they're decades late the game, but as long as they insist on windows being an ad-filled privacy nightmare I can't bring myself to get excited about any of its features. I just want to use it as little as possible.

Notepad++.

Nothing Microsoft releases will even come close to the perfection that is Notepad++.

Notepad++ is what convinced me to invest in text editors and bought sublime text instead. Notepad++ is a good editor, buts it’s a bloody eyesore. These days I tend to just use VS Code as it’s Good Enough for the text file editing I do and I don’t have to bother looking up my license info on reinstalls.

In what ways is Notepad++ an eyesore? It's got a lot of themes out of the box and you're free to tweak it as you like. My one complaint is that they don't give you a way to edit the toolbar since there's a 'save all' button I'm always worried I'll hit on accident someday, but I think there's even a plugin that might fix that.

Customize Toolbar is the plugin you're looking for: https://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-customize/

Perfection? It is super slow to start compared to vscode and it has a super annoying transparent search box that always seems to get in your way.

I never realized notepad++ was that slow until I, last week, had to manual updates config files (open file > find in file > scroll to line) on a bunch of servers that had both vscode and np++ installed. I think I would be able to perform the change in vscode in less time that it takes np++ to open the document.

I wonder why Notepad is getting tabs now, in 2023, when Microsoft already has the phenomenally successful VS Code and there are so many good, established alternatives like Notepad++ or Sublime Text. Maybe it'll be nice for admins logging onto Windows Server instances that don't have any other editors installed? Lol

A bit late, but better than nothing. It's a good thing - as it looks like Microsoft is finally committed to adding tabs where needed. Tabs in Edge, File Explorer, and now Notepad.

Where else do we need them?

Notepad is good because it is simple and starts quickly. It's perfect at what it's intended for, viewing logs and buffering stuff from the clipboard. If I wanted to code I would use an actual code editor rather than Notepad. Tabs just mean more clicks between me and the file I want to view.