Daring Fireball: Nextpad++
Daring Fireball • • technology
Key Points:
- Nextpad++ is a newly launched Mac port of the open-source Windows text editor Notepad++, created by Andrey Letov, who initially named it "Notepad++ for Mac" before renaming due to a naming dispute.
- The project began in March and quickly released version 1.0 within weeks, a pace attributed to the use of multi-agent AI development workflows, making it a one-person effort at this scale.
- Unlike typical Mac apps, Nextpad++ feels alien and unconventional, with a cluttered interface, unusual behaviors like closing tabs on mousedown, and non-standard default settings, making it feel out of place on MacOS.
- The app is built with Objective-C++ on top of Scintilla and Cocoa, is a Universal Binary supporting Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and is relatively lightweight at 14 MB.
- While the editor is a genuine native Mac app, its design and user experience diverge sharply from Mac conventions, leading to mixed reactions despite intrigue around AI-assisted development.