Excel just entered its 40th year

The Register asks us if we Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year:

Microsoft Excel, the true successor to the throne of COBOL. Version 1.0 was released on the last day of September 1985, four decades ago.

While there is a bit of hyperbole here, Microsoft Excel (as the dominant species of spreadsheet software), whose idiosyncracies have caused grief to geneticists when it thinks everything is a date, is at the core of many business processes, unwillingly. It was released in 1985, only on Macintosh, and I do remember when I first encountered it.

Excel wasn’t the first spreadsheet, Visicalc on Apple ][, later supplanted by Lotus 1-2-3 on PC both predated Excel, but Excel became the most comprehensive and de-facto standard on a Microsoft controlled market, eliminating most competition on both Windows and Mac, thanks to agressive and anticompetitive practices.

Excel even has its own championship.