I think you may be overestimating the difference between one language and another. There are differences between the BASICs of the 80s and (say) the bash scripts of today, but they're not as big as surface syntax would initially seem to suggest. BASIC back then taught one thing well, unstructured imperative code, well enough that a BASIC programmer, believe it or not, wouldn't have felt it too big a jump to move straight to assembler programming, which would have been the next logical progression to eke out decent performance on the severely resource-constrained microcomputers of the day.
The biggest difference between programming then and now is the size of our problems, and consequently, the number of abstraction tools in our languages. But there is a relatively small set of abstractions known to work well, and a substantial subset of them crop up in almost all languages. Learning all of a Python or Ruby or Javascript, and knowing how to use it well and in a structured way, would cover a good, say, 60% of various concepts of imperative, functional and object-oriented programming, such that you could move to any of the others (in that set) without much trouble.
Learning all of a Python or Ruby or Javascript, and knowing how to use it well and in a structured way, would cover a good, say, 60% of various concepts of imperative, functional and object-oriented programming
Totally agree, and my issue is more that these languages are too linked to the environment in which they run - step 1 of learning to code shouldn't be wrestling with install files and stacks and tools (http://tryruby.org is a great exception). Secondly, a lot of the way they are taught does not actually teach you the abstractions but expects you to parrot code and infer the abstractions as you go along.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to bring back BASIC as a platform for today, though it'd be fun to see it happen.
The biggest difference between programming then and now is the size of our problems, and consequently, the number of abstraction tools in our languages. But there is a relatively small set of abstractions known to work well, and a substantial subset of them crop up in almost all languages. Learning all of a Python or Ruby or Javascript, and knowing how to use it well and in a structured way, would cover a good, say, 60% of various concepts of imperative, functional and object-oriented programming, such that you could move to any of the others (in that set) without much trouble.