Lotus 1-2-3
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 12 spreadsheets by recommenders
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.
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.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 34
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 34 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 17 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast keyboard-driven navigation
“deterministic keyboard nav and a reliable type ahead buffer meant the user could queue up a burst of actions from muscle memory”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “Information density, no decorative UI elements distracting you from the content, and keyboard navigability.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “Keyboard driven, extremely fast, all written in 16-bit assembler for the original IBM PC”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal” - Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Rebasing in Magit”
Nostalgia for classic software
“I so miss the days when software was like this.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “his love for Lotus never went away”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “1-2-3 was damn cool though”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” - Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS”
Fast even on old PCs
“Keyboard driven, extremely fast, all written in 16-bit assembler for the original IBM PC”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal” “256k and Lotus 1-2-3 was much more capable than anything an Apple could do”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Laptop Based on 6502 CPU” “on a 486, Lotus 1-2-3 was essentially instant”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Emulated Windows 3.11 in the Browser” Made financial modeling accessible
“It was like crack to accountants. VisiCalc was in use but this took it to a whole new level.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “the spreadsheet era was the step that made financial math legible to non-programmers”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS” “Products like 1-2-3 succeeded by solving real world problems”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Manual, keystroke-based workflows
“The planning spreadsheets were a series of Lotus 1-2-3 jobbies with a lot of manual copy and pasting”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Emulated Windows 3.11 in the Browser” “which were nothing more than a sequence of keystrokes entered as a long string into a worksheet cell”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Lotus 1-2-3 on the PC with DOS”
Other spreadsheets people recommend
The four most recommended other spreadsheets, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Excel | 339 | 292 | 54% | 12 | 30 yrs12 owners | — |
| Google Sheets | 92 | 54 | 63% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | — |
| Lotus 1-2-3This page | 34 | 2 | 94% | 8 | — | Approved |
| LibreOffice Calc | 32 | 18 | 64% | 10 | 2 yrs3 owners | — |
| Numbers by Apple | 27 | 22 | 55% | 11 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 40 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“256k and Lotus 1-2-3 was much more capable than anything an Apple could do”
“I had to recalc our accountants 1-2-3 models”
“Microsoft themselves had to solve that exact problem themselves for Lotus 1-2-3.”
“I highly recommend taking inspiration from lotus 123”
“amongst the other best software I'd be tempted by Lotus 123”
“123R2 runs fine under msdos runner”
“how thoughtfully it was designed for data-input efficiency”
“Text-mode versions of Wordperfect, Wordstar, and Lotus 1-2-3 were pretty good too.”
“I use Lotus 1-2-3 in a Terminal”
“I saw other people log in and it was amazing.”
“Awesome sauce! I was too lazy to track this down, thanks for sharing!”
“You can also literally run Lotus 123 if you want.”
“Early tools like Lotus 1-2-3 and dbase were mind-blowing because they were so generalized and available on consumer appliances.”
“the shortcuts were super easy to get accustomed to”
“It was like crack to accountants. VisiCalc was in use but this took it to a whole new level.”
“the only good thing about that awful platform”
“which were nothing more than a sequence of keystrokes entered as a long string into a worksheet cell”
“Loved it, then took another class the next year”
“1-2-3 let them build it out themselves and play with it before showing it to anyone.”
“the spreadsheet era was the step that made financial math legible to non-programmers”
“I so miss the days when software was like this.”
“Products like 1-2-3 succeeded by solving real world problems”
“Mucking around with autoexec.bat, config.sys, emm386 etc to get 1-2-3 to load was fun.”
“Tavis Ormandy made a great post on Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux”
“But 1-2-3 was clearly better.”
“his love for Lotus never went away”
“deterministic keyboard nav and a reliable type ahead buffer meant the user could queue up a burst of actions from muscle memory”
“Information density, no decorative UI elements distracting you from the content, and keyboard navigability.”
“1-2-3 was damn cool though”
“on a 486, Lotus 1-2-3 was essentially instant”
“The planning spreadsheets were a series of Lotus 1-2-3 jobbies with a lot of manual copy and pasting”
“Keyboard driven, extremely fast, all written in 16-bit assembler for the original IBM PC”
“You could even get common software like WP, Lotus 123”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.