BASIC was the thing that allowed non-programmers to easily start out. It was the whole reason home computers initially took off - they all ran BASIC, source cod

BASIC was the thing that allowed non-programmers to easily start out. It was the whole reason home computers initially took off - they all ran BASIC, source code was mostly compatible across systems (as long as you didn't use special features unique to your computer) and anybody could learn it in a day. It's never been replaced or improved upon. You could argue Python is the modern BASIC but it's much more complicated and far slower, bit banging the hardware is also not something easily experimented with in Python whereas with BASIC it was the next step beyond learning the keywords on your machine. The GOTO guy has done more damage to computing than Microsoft and Google combined.