And as it happens, early versions of Excel used a bytecode running on a VM instead of native code. Though the motivation was not portability, but rather memory requirements:
> In most cases, p-code can reduce the size of an executable file by about 40 percent. For example, the Windows Project Manager version 1.0 (resource files not included) shrinks from 932K (C/C++ 7.0 with size optimizations turned on) to 556K when p-code is employed.
> Until now, p-code has been a proprietary technology developed by the applications group at Microsoft and used on a variety of internal projects. The retail releases of Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint®, and other applications employ this technology to provide extensive breadth of functionality without consuming inordinate amounts of memory.
http://sandsprite.com/vb-reversing/files/Microsoft%20P-Code%...
I thought most software was MS Excel sheets with interacting formulae :-)