I understand Dijkstra's anti-BASIC quote as a reference to his observation that the values underlying such a procedural/imperative language predispose a program

I understand Dijkstra's anti-BASIC quote as a reference to his observation that the values underlying such a procedural/imperative language predispose a programmer to think exclusively operationally. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1012.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E... Another well-known Dijkstra epigram has it that "Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code." BASIC programs don't lend themselves to being treated as anything other than pieces of executable code.