Since you're the creator, I'd like to ask you, why BASIC and not Smalltalk? You mention a desire to eschew boilerplate and provide instant gratification--doesn't Smalltalk provide that as well if not better than BASIC?
This was a subjective decision. While I agree it's less succinct, syntactically, I feel Basic reads easier than Smalltalk - especially to someone with no programming exposure.
But that being the case, wouldn't Pascal have been even friendly to someone with no programming exposure? Of all the languages I've used, I think Pascal reads the easiest.
Variants of BASIC are also unstructured and teach bad habits, such as the construction of goto-laden messes. Smalltalk by contrast is both simple (for example, having only three levels of precedence) yet also a modern, pure OO language coupled with a graphical, live programming environment.
Unstructured code can actually be easier for beginners to learn. There's no magical implicit context in a loop, just a few variables they have direct control over, and an instruction pointer they control with GOTO.
Once a beginner has written a few small programs with GOTO, they'll start to feel the tedium and appreciate the benefits of structural abstractions, despite the extra things they have to learn.
You can make the same argument for writing code with simple functions and records before object oriented code -- the power of the abstraction is easier to explain once they've run into the rougher points of not having objects.
Absolute beginners are confused by polymorphism and loop constructs because they don't understand the problems the abstractions solve.
I have terrible news for you: John Lennon will be dead next year, and Altair BASIC author Bill Gates III is on track to become the richest man in the world.
Scaevolus touted as an advantage the minimalism of variants of BASIC over Smalltalk and linked to such a variant lacking structured programming constructs like functions. I pointed out the flaws of that and certain other variants and ended up at -4 as a consequence.
Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously Haskell would be at the top, but I never would have guessed BASIC would make the cut.
> Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously Haskell would be at the top
I don't think you'll get any arguments from any Haskeller about the record system being annoying, laziness being hard to learn about at first, or it being a more difficult (but not as difficult as people think) language to learn.
Perhaps I'm biased, but HN seems to cargo cult a lot less than other popular communities.
You got down voted because your comment read like you were tarnishing all variants of BASIC with the same brush when in fact many variants do promote structured programming.
