> 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.

Just checked, Dev-C++ seems to still be going: https://www.bloodshed.net.

Oh my god, really? That was my first editor like 20 years ago. Haven't used it since then I think.

Embarcadero's improved fork: https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/dev-cpp

vim is amazing once you learn a couple verbs, visual block mode, windows, and the nice special subjects, eg % for enclosing parens

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.

I have never encountered an OS distribution that did not have vi pre-installed

Everywhere useful has it these days; even on Windows you can get a very capable vim in Git Bash or WSL

I seldom use vim/neovim these days (except for commit messages as it's $EDITOR) but use vim bindings via plugins everywhere I can (Intellij, VSCode)

Sometimes there's issues with these, but they're generally quite good for daily use (although slower)

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.

+1 for CudaText. Missed Np++ when I switched to Linux (trying to avoid Wine whenever possible), tried many alternatives and only rested when I found it about a year later.

Excellent performance for big files (some might know Universal Viewer for this task, it's from the same dev), simple and efficient like Np++ while still having some more advanced features. Very customizable through options and plugins.

CudaText is a wonderful software. I found it after a few years of using SublimeText (and after my current employer doesn't allow me to use it). CudaText is fast and has many plugins to manage every need as Notepad++, despite some roughness in some parts of the user interface compared to ST.

People keep saying notepad++ is great for large files. But for me large file means 1-2 GB, which completely kills np++. For these files I use EditPad Lite.