[astine]

Gates founded Microsoft to sell a Basic interpreter. His company spent a lot of time keeping Basic as a core part of its line up long after it was considered passé. I suspect that Gates has some nostalgia for it.

[0x0]

Yeah, Microsoft really is the "BASIC company". From the early 8bit machines (did you know the Commodore 64 BASIC ROM is (c) Microsoft?) through qbasic and all the way up to visual basic and VBA...

[ConstantineXVI]

Not just the Commodore; the Apple II, TRS-80, and MSX all used Microsoft's BASIC in one form or another. It shouldn't be any surprise at all that their dev tools continue to be rather well done (regardless of what you think of the platform they're on)