It is actually a little funny if you go back and look at the reasons people now give for why Lotus 123 was over taken by Excel. Most of the revisionist historians know about Visual Basic for Applications which was included with Excel starting in 1994, but do not seem to realize that 123 had a capable macro language starting with version 2 in 1984 nine years earlier.
Part of the reason is that most 123 users never used the macro language or even realized it was available and the same was still true of Excel when Visual Basic was integrated. This created great opportunities for people like your son who became proficient using it.
I started working for as a firefighter during in this time period. A couple of years after I was hired and they started installing computers in the stations to enter our reports into. They paid a bundle for the software that they used on them. After a short introduction I realized immediately that they could have done the same type of data entry using 123 and some macro routines. This would have cost a fraction of the price for the development and been far more flexible and efficient. But it was a government run operation run by a people who had no clue whatsoever when it came to this type of thing.
All very true. I am one of the people who did not appreciate macros when I was using Lotus, and moved to excel when I learned that lotus statements worked on excel. But I never understood the power of macros — I always turned them off. Part of the reason was that I was not doing anything complex, but the other reason was that I moved on to other languages although I still do my personal spreadsheets on excel.
However, I became a user of Fortran, Algol, Cobal, assy language, and much later JAVA as an instructor. So I did understand the incredible power of the computer. As an engineer, I learned to work with VHDL as well, although not a proficient user, more of a trouble shooter and follower after someone else wrote the code. It has been a great career. Thanks for revisiting those days with me.