Notepad++ is what convinced me to invest in text editors and bought sublime text instead. Notepad++ is a good editor, buts it’s a bloody eyesore. These days I tend to just use VS Code as it’s Good Enough for the text file editing I do and I don’t have to bother looking up my license info on reinstalls.
In what ways is Notepad++ an eyesore? It's got a lot of themes out of the box and you're free to tweak it as you like. My one complaint is that they don't give you a way to edit the toolbar since there's a 'save all' button I'm always worried I'll hit on accident someday, but I think there's even a plugin that might fix that.