Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone

Re:Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone by deathanatos on Thursday July 02, 2026 @01:19PM (#48764555)

When I was younger, I decided I wanted to learn how to write games. I decided I needed to start simple, though, and I thought NOTEPAD.EXE was about the simplest thing out there. (This was in Windows 3.1.) So to learn how NOTEPAD.EXE worked, I opened NOTEPAD.EXE in NOTEPAD.EXE, and spent several hours trying to decipher the symbols' meanings.

My first attempt at coding was … unsuccessful.

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Re:Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone by dlcarrier on Thursday July 02, 2026 @02:31PM (#48765544)

I did something similar with electronics. I thought if I applied voltages to random pins, and read voltages on other pins, I could figure out how an integrated circuit worked.

The crazy part is that my strategy actually worked on a single MOSFET transistor, which only has three pins. I just assumed it would scale up on computer chip with tens to hundreds of thousands of MOSFETS and a few dozen pins. Also, if my first test had been on a BJT transistor, instead of a MOSFET, I would have destroyed it.

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Re:Former Microsoft dev built a 2.5KB Notepad clone by xnoreq on Thursday July 02, 2026 @01:41PM (#48764884)

So far and yet so close...

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