I totally understand the advantages and disadvantages of C and Basic. But nearly all major programmers will (if you press them hard enough) admit that they started in some form of Basic. I think that the difference is that with Basic you could quickly and easily get the acknowledgement you need that you CAN create something really cool. Then you are motivated to learn something harder in order to do something even cooler. Thats the purpose that Basic was created and I think it did a great job of it.
Telling someone to skip Basic and start in C tends to blow them off the subject of programming IMHO. And I think we are seeing the results of that lately.
Gandalf Parker
--
I understand some of the problems of BASIC..(singing)
This is the code that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends.
Some people started GOTOing it not knowing what it was
And now they keep GOTOing it forever just because
This is the code that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends.
(inspired by Lambchop's song..
http://www.zutroy.com/stuff/neverend/)