An excellent article you wrote. Great with all the details.

Lotus123, Calcstar then Multiplan then Excel..

Only for the record, in the "passage" between Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel there was an excellent spreadsheet by Borland (that never got many traction) called "Quattro" (the Italian for 4, as if it was a continuation of the 1-2-3 series): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_Pro later it became Quattro Pro and then was acquired by Corel and I believe it is very uncommon nowadays.

As a side note, VBA has been added to Excel only after version 4, before that there was only a Macro language.

If you want to feel how an ol' version of Excel behaved (without many bells and whistles and of course without the ribbon) there is an exceptionally good little program here:

http://www.byedesign.co.uk/

that has most functions and fits (the 32 bit Windows version) in a single (portable) file hust below 1,500,000 bytes.

And, JFYI, the sad part is that I wrote my fifth "I love you":

>One “I love you” for every year since I’ve fallen in love with...Microsoft Excel?

in 1994 or 1995.

Honorable mention for Logistix on Amiga, which I think came out around the same time as Excel or shortly after.