[pav3l]

The biggest reason BASIC was popular to teach back in the day, is because it is very simple. You are allowed to use GOTO statements which will make (bad) programming a whole lot easier for absolute beginners. On the other hand Python is a well-designed language. It encourages both OOP and FP, and honestly I am not convinced that just because smart people are actively pushing Python to become "the next BASIC", it is going to be very interesting for absolute beginners with little exposure to math and logic.

[zobzu]

To iterate on what you said:

Because it was simple and the rest was very complex. In fact, only assembly language for some CPUs was as simple as basic (now, it's not really the case anymore, although asm basics are simple, stuff often gets complicated with special registers and special opcodes doing magic)

Many languages today as simple and relatively sane, like, say "python" ;-) (now the other reason why I like python is because while you don't feel limited with it, it _forces_ people to code half readable, half decent stuff. They got a good balance)