"We wanted the syntax of the language to consist of common words, and to have those words have a more-or-less obvious meaning,” says Kurtz. Whether you love or

"We wanted the syntax of the language to consist of common words, and to have those words have a more-or-less obvious meaning,” says Kurtz. Whether you love or hate BASIC, two ideas in the language still stand the test of time: friendly, readable syntax to make the language more amenable to users (subjective I know) and a small set of commands to reduce the complexity of programming. Can those ideas still survive in programming languages today? Some modern languages possess one of these features, but rarely both.