The version of BASIC I learned (Applesoft) had little support for functions and no concept of scoping. Every variable was global. GOSUB acted a little like a fu

The version of BASIC I learned (Applesoft) had little support for functions and no concept of scoping. Every variable was global. GOSUB acted a little like a function, but barely (no function parameters, and without variable scoping a parameter is meaningless anyway). Without these features, it was very hard to write a program of any size without it becoming a mess. I wouldn't go so far as to say BASIC breaks your brain, but it is almost antithetical to structured programming, and eventually you need to learn structured programming if you plan to write maintainable code. There is also an argument against learning programming with languages that have no concept of a heap. I agree that a C pointer is a weird thing at first, and some people never get it. But I've softened my stance over the years. People can be productive coders without being bit twiddlers.