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by nom
3512 days ago
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No, BASIC didn't do any damage to anyone, ever. You are so wrong here that I can't even express it. Your suggestions on the other hand are way off and may do even more damage than any BASIC dialect could. Lua, Python, Node.js, Ruby and Assembly are the _worst_ languages you can teach a beginner. They are too complex, they behave weird and there are not enough constraints. Even Processing/Arduino is better. It has to be as simple as possible. I still suggest a BASIC dialect for beginners. People should really give Blitz BASIC a try, it's like BASIC on crack. It's super easy to render 2D and even 3D graphics and it has classes too (yes you read that right). I used it once, well over 10 years ago and it was unbelievably easy to handle, you can learn it on the fly. I think I was 15 years old at that time and I've never implemented a game more quickly. |
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Ruby is one of the easiest languages to teach because it's very forgiving and it's really easy to navigate the documentation. In a single day people with no programming background can go from not being sure how to start to reading in things from a text file and producing useful output. Given a few weeks they can be interfacing with a database and making web pages.
You cannot do that with the sort of BASIC you got on the C64. Someone with enough patience and audacity could surely make a web server in BASIC for the C64, but it's such a ludicrous project that it would only serve as a proof of concept, not a useful tool.
Nothing you learn BASIC will ever help you. It's all garbage. You're viewing this through the rosy lens of history. At the time it was the best we had, we made do, we did great things with it, but now there's far better tools.
People can and do make furniture with hand-powered tools, but let's be honest. As much as power tools are more complicated and more dangerous, it's not hard for people to learn how to use them, and if they do they'll be far more productive.