Yes, quite correct. I think 95 was the first version to have VBA. Prior to
that, a macro  was stored as a collection of keystrokes and only had limited
functionality.

Microsoft have perpetuated this confusion by still referring to them as
"macros" from the worksheet side of Excel.

Using the "macro recorder" creates a single VBA subroutine that has the
Visual Basic equivalent of everything you do while the recorder is
recording. It's very useful for beginners, but also very useful for
experienced people, because it stops you needing to do a search to refresh
your memory on the VBA needed to do something obscure to the worksheet.