oh the memories! I just voted for BASIC (having self learned BBC Basic using school computers after school). Your post reminded me that I actually first started to learn to program asm on an ORIC 16k.
Yes, I voted for BASIC too but ASM was what I first messed around in on an Amstrad 512k using the manual that it came with. Remember when manuals had pin outs of all the ports and sometimes circuit digrams and included a reference manual of the CPU instruction set and sample programs?? Oh those where the days =)