For me BASIC led to VB which led to VB.Net which quickly led me to C#. I did some real fun stuff in BASIC as a kid that I never replicated in later languages.

For me BASIC led to VB which led to VB.Net which quickly led me to C#. I did some real fun stuff in BASIC as a kid that I never replicated in later languages. In kindergarten or first grade, I picked up a book called something like "Make Your Own Computer Games" at my local library. Everything was GOTOs and LABELS. The librarian didn't want to let me check it out because it was beyond my understanding, but my grandma insisted. That night and for the following 2 days, on my Dad's work computer, I would type and retype these computer games into GWBASIC in MSDOS, and then type run at the end. There was no way to actually save the .BAS files, so any time I wanted to play one of these games, I had to type it. So I memorized them before I had to turn the book back in. I then started to combine games together. Like "Guess the Number" and "Hangman" which actually taught me more about programming than anything I learned later in life from education.