I grew up with BASIC as a gateway drug, too (that's a great way to describe it on a number of levels!) and PICO-8 and the like are the closest modern equivalent

I grew up with BASIC as a gateway drug, too (that's a great way to describe it on a number of levels!) and PICO-8 and the like are the closest modern equivalent I've seen to that kind of environment. Simple games with simple graphics plus the ability to drop into a code/sprite/etc editor with the press of a key. The only real negative to me is that Lua, like most any modern language (i.e. ones that regularly use indentation), doesn't seem particularly well-suited to being edited in a very low resolution window. But it's still the closest I've seen to something that recaptures that "immediate" magic of ROM BASIC.