I'm pondering how to make a text editor very stable. In my experience, text editors are second only to games in exhibiting flaky behavior (hanging, corrupted files, etc.).
I haven't programmed for Windows, but I have maintained a lot of Windows machines since the mid 1990s, and it occurred to me that NotePad is perhaps the one application I have used a lot but have never had a problem with.
What about the design of the Windows 9x NotePad made it so stable? Did the very small file size limit (64 KB) allow a simpler internal structure?
Two reasons: it's pared down to the essentials, and it relies on the existing Windows text control for most of its functionality.