In Windows i use Notepad++ so i don't have to use Vim (which is for me the only viable alternative of a lightweight "programmer's editor" and what i used for a while before learning about Notepad++ - everything else, like vscode, emacs, etc feel much more heavyweight) since i dislike its modal nature and non-standard[0] shortcuts.
[0] i know that technically they predate whatever Notepad++ uses but pretty much everything else (including on KDE, GNOME, most X11 toolkits, etc) uses the same or similar shortcuts and keys as Notepad++ so who came first is moot, it is what i am used to that matters
- open a file for editing, realize you needed admin rights, npp allows you to relaunch with escalation and keeping the change in memory
- find all gives you a list of items, a count of them, and quick preview of each
- supports the editorconfig format, so inherits rules you've designed for your other IDEs
- colors
- allows tail -f (the eye icon)
- can be extended with plugins (unlike notepad) although the out of the box works well enough for most (unlike vsc)
- less bloated than electron apps, when comparing with any vscode setup you would use for larger developments
- tracks which open files have had a change, lets you choose if you want to reload the file (update contents displayed without reopening the app) or not (helps you save what you're seeing before verifying what might have replaced it)
- lets you see and change encoding very easily
There's more, but I just picked a few things I find useful every day when I need to deal with many windows machines at a midsized company.
Then don't use it. For sure regular notepad works fine for quick text edit. The use case for notepad++ is for when you want to do more than that. I, for example, frequently have to do a bunch of more complicated things to plain text files and notepad++ works great for those where notepad has no chance.
Never had this issues for notepad++.
For text it's fine.