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Microsoft retires WordPad after 28 years — app no longer available as of Windows 11 24H2
(www.tomshardware.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
WordPad in Windows 95 was a demonstration of how to use the rich-text editing component built into Windows. Its C++ source code came bundled with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes - programming library for making Windows apps using C++) as a sample.
The fact that it was a useful tool for end users was essentially just a side effect.