Microsoft justifies this by saying "Notepad is for notes" (in the same way that a Stickies dashboard widget is.) That is, Notepad is "Microsoft OneNote Extra-Lite," in the same way that Wordpad is "Microsoft Word Extra-Lite." Hackers think Notepad is actually "Visual Studio Extra-Lite," but it's not, and it's not trying to be. I think everyone would be happier with debugging and automating a default Windows install if Microsoft just shipped a SciTE-like accessory separately from Notepad, and defaulted .ini files and such to opening in it.