I am an admitted retro addict - I have every computer I've ever owned since 1983. So, to me there is just one answer to why BASIC still matters: Old computers

I am an admitted retro addict - I have every computer I've ever owned since 1983. So, to me there is just one answer to why BASIC still matters: Old computers never die - their users do! Every computer out there is still capable of delivering value to someone, out there. I really think its a shame we have allowed the consumer cult viewpoint to prevail, and that we consider 'old computers' to be "useless" - when this is really not what's happened. We changed, not the physical hardware. By way of anecdote: My 11 year old kid is learning as much about programming computers - and most importantly, how computers really work - from hacking code on one of my 8-bit machines, as he would by trying to crank up Xcode, were that at all feasible ..