If not for the BASIC examples in the old 3-2-1 contact kids magazines that I discovered worked on my elementary schools Apple II computers and then later QBASIC, I have no idea what I would be doing in life.

That was my gateway to a greater interest in computers and an eventual job in IT. And. I will always respect BASIC for it.

I agree with the author that oddly Basic syntax is closer to Assembly than most languages so is an ok place to start.

I'd like to see Dijkstra write an Assembly program without JMP.

My kids have been surprisingly interested when I show them Commodore 64 or BBC Micro BASIC. I was expecting them to groan but they wanted to write their own programs on them. They're also more interested when it's a physical machine than an emulator.

Learned how to render graphics the hard way in Apple BASIC back in grade school. Was fun.

I think it's a bad idea to start with BASIC in this day and age. However, I do think it's a very good idea to teach student BASIC once they've learned a modern language. It's a great way to teach them why programming works the way it does and to teach about the roots.

A fun exercise that nerd-sniped me last year: recreate The Matrix's "code rain" effect.

QBASIC was what programming I was in high school. That pretty much ensured programming II was an empty class