# Lotus 1-2-3

34 Hacker News commenters recommended Lotus 1-2-3 and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for keyboard-driven speed, fast performance on 486-era PCs, and an uncluttered interface suited to financial modeling; critics cite manual, keystroke-based workflows.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast keyboard-driven navigation (4 comments): "deterministic keyboard nav and a reliable type ahead buffer meant the user could queue up a burst of actions from muscle memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320528)) "Information density, no decorative UI elements distracting you from the content, and keyboard navigability." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320374)) "Keyboard driven, extremely fast, all written in 16-bit assembler for the original IBM PC" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47085879))
- Nostalgia for classic software (4 comments): "I so miss the days when software was like this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321631)) "his love for Lotus never went away" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320637)) "1-2-3 was damn cool though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47319859))
- Fast even on old PCs (3 comments): "Keyboard driven, extremely fast, all written in 16-bit assembler for the original IBM PC" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47085879)) "256k and Lotus 1-2-3 was much more capable than anything an Apple could do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148521)) "on a 486, Lotus 1-2-3 was essentially instant" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47116922))
- Made financial modeling accessible (3 comments): "It was like crack to accountants. VisiCalc was in use but this took it to a whole new level." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323974)) "the spreadsheet era was the step that made financial math legible to non-programmers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322763)) "Products like 1-2-3 succeeded by solving real world problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321628))

## What people warn about

- Manual, keystroke-based workflows (2 comments): "The planning spreadsheets were a series of Lotus 1-2-3 jobbies with a lot of manual copy and pasting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47116133)) "which were nothing more than a sequence of keystrokes entered as a long string into a worksheet cell" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323340))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Microsoft Excel](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-excel.md): 339 recommend
- [Google Sheets](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-sheets.md): 92 recommend
- [LibreOffice Calc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libreoffice-calc.md): 32 recommend
- [Numbers by Apple](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numbers.md): 27 recommend
- [cell terminal spreadsheet editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/terminal-spreadsheet-editor-with-vim-keybindings.md): 12 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Lotus 1-2-3", https://hackerapproved.com/p/lotus-1-2-3/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).