[zozbot234]

Plenty of elementary and middle-school kids learned LOGO which is a vastly more elegant language than BASIC. (It's essentially a LISP with different syntax, the one thing that's inadvisable about it for modern purposes is its use of dynamic scope.)

[killerstorm]

I think understand of programming as a sequence of commands is necessary before you go to abstractions. BASIC's GOTO is a feature, not a bug: that's how assembly work.

As an adult I'd strongly prefer Lisp over Basic. But I appreciate Lisp or lambda calculus elegance after I spent some time with more basic kind of stuff. Going to higher abstractions right away won't have the same effect