Windows notepad is actually a very complicated program, if you want simple windows programming try learning VB. Here is a simple C++ program...
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
char msg[] = "Hello, world!";
int msgLen = strlen(msg);
std::cout << msg << std::endl;
std::cout << "(is) " << msgLen << " characters in length." << std::endl;
return 0;
}