I think it's because QBasic was, among many things, a bit of a bridging language. - Basic had existed even before displays and keyboards were popular, so many

I think it's because QBasic was, among many things, a bit of a bridging language. - Basic had existed even before displays and keyboards were popular, so many software developers from that era could appreciate it. - Microsoft included QBasic 1.1 for free with some of their operating systems. - All things considered, it was fairly compatible (depending on what the code did) with GWBasic and even basic/basica from old IBM terminals. - The language was also easy to understand which made it ideal for education Probably among other points, this brought a pretty large and diverse group of people who loved programming together.