Two half-decent reasons come to mind. One is teacher familiarity. Many people have used a variant of BASIC before, whether in 80s home computers, via Qbasic or

Two half-decent reasons come to mind. One is teacher familiarity. Many people have used a variant of BASIC before, whether in 80s home computers, via Qbasic or VB on PCs in the 90s, or via VBScript in Office. This may make potential teachers less intimidated, more confident, and more willing to teach it to kids. Secondly, I can imagine that some schools use VB.NET for later courses, and this could provide a simple introduction to move towards using the full-blown VB.NET, and being able to easily transfer what they already know. That said, I don't really see why it needs to have a pedagogical advantage. My initial feeling was that it was just someone looking to scratch an itch for nostalgia's sake, missing the days when every computer came with a BASIC, and a quick look through the blog pretty much confirms that (http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/archive/2008/10/23/hello-world.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/smallbasic/archive/2008/10/23/hello-wo...).