Dave Plummer, the ex-Microsoft engineer behind Task Manager and Windows Pinball, just dropped RetroPad: a full-feature recreation of the original Notepad in 2,686 bytes of x86 assembly. Modern Windows Notepad clocks in at 352KB, bloated with Copilot hooks, telemetry, and feature creep that turned a simple text tool into something that wants your account and cloud sync. Plummer leveraged Win32's built-in menus and GUI primitives plus the Crinkler linker to keep it lean—no cheats, just the kind of disciplined coding that made NT-era apps fit on a floppy.

The project matches XP Notepad parity, including open/save, font changes, printing via system dialogs, and later additions like optional line numbers and dark mode. Source and executable landed on GitHub under Apache 2.0, and the man himself noted the source code is exactly 2,686 lines. Community reaction on X has been a mix of nostalgia and pointed jabs at Microsoft's direction—Plummer's own post racked up thousands of likes with the tagline "No bloat. No telemetry. No nonsense."

It's a timely flex as memory prices climb and AI features keep inflating everything. Plummer's challenge to the room: what other "impossible" tiny apps should he tackle next? The answer is obvious—File Explorer is right there.