Summary

Gruber examines Nextpad++, a Mac port of the Windows text editor Notepad++, built by a single developer using AI vibe-coding agents in just weeks. He provides context on Notepad, Notepad++, and the Mac text editor landscape before dissecting how Nextpad++ represents something new and unsettling — an AI-generated port that is technically native but fundamentally wrong in every design detail. Despite being built with Objective-C++ and Cocoa, the app betrays no understanding of Mac conventions, from its 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons to closing tabs on mousedown. Gruber concludes that while he's intrigued by vibe-coding, this app feels unholy — a cautionary example of AI enabling technically possible but aesthetically bankrupt software.

Key Insight

AI vibe-coding can now produce technically native software at unprecedented speed, but without human taste and platform sensibility, the result is an uncanny valley app that embodies everything wrong with prioritizing capability over craft.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 9

  Nextpad++ feels like a fever dream. Like what Mac apps would be if the Nazis had won WWII.

• 7

  They are apps for the Mac but aren't Mac apps.

• 8

  It doesn't feel like an alien. It feels like Vincent D'Onofrio's alien-bug-in-human-skin character from Men in Black.

• 6

  No human being would port a complex Windows app like Notepad++ to the Mac like this.

• 7

  I'm not anti-AI. I'm very much intrigued by the whole incipient vibe-coding phenomenon. But this app feels unholy.

• 6

  It offers four settings for font antialiasing — 'Default', 'None', 'Antialiased', and 'LCD Optimized' — but the default is not 'Default'.

• 7

  Multi-agent AI development workflows are what make a one-person project at this scale practical. Possible, sure, but I wouldn't call this practical.

• 5

  It closes document tabs on mousedown, not mouseup. Its default font is 10-point Courier New.

Tone

satirical