My first computer was the VIC-20 and grew up on C-64 and, today, I thank the stars that they didn't have that stuff in their BASIC implementation. Because I ha

My first computer was the VIC-20 and grew up on C-64 and, today, I thank the stars that they didn't have that stuff in their BASIC implementation. Because I had to deal with the machine on its terms, rather than more comfortable terms, I believe I gained an understanding and intuition for digital logic and processing fundamentals. I think this early grounding in low level basics has allowed me to be flexible and adaptive in ways that many of my colleagues that have only ever had practical experience operating at high levels of abstraction seem to have trouble with. Naturally this is all anecdote and should be weighted accordingly, but my sense is that these experiences ultimately were formative in rather positive ways given my age and such at the time. And none of this is to disagree with your point... only to show that the primitive BASIC, coupled with for the time rather nice hardware for price, wasn't necessarily bad.