[astrodust]

I can teach beginners any language and present it in terms they can absorb, even C, even assembly, even C++. With those it's a longer road to walk before the student can be productive, but it's possible if they're patient and willing to follow.

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.