> This shows well what a terrible language BASIC was

BASIC was conceived as a simplified, efficient, interactive equivalent to FORTRAN. Which is to say, it was extremely useful and effective! It met all of its design goals:

Simplified: novices could learn the language in an afternoon.

Efficient: the language was suitable for fast compilation (as in Dartmouth BASIC, where it compiled and executed the program when you typed "run") and efficient enough that a single 1960s minicomputer could support dozens of interactive BASIC users, and a simple BASIC interpreter could be implemented in a few kilobytes of memory on 1970s microcomputers.

Interactive: unlike typical batch FORTRAN environments in the 1960s with decks of punched cards, the BASIC environment supported interactive entry, editing, and debugging as well as interactive execution on a print or display terminal.

Equivalent to FORTRAN: Like FORTRAN, BASIC supported algebraic function entry, and was suitable for a wide range of programs. Dartmouth BASIC supported matrix operations for numerical computing as well as string functions for text processing.

> A triumphant report by Kemeny and Kurtz indicated that 80 percent of the three incoming first-year classes who had arrived since BASIC’s invention [1964] –would have learned about computers by writing and debugging their programs.

> “Anyone who tries to convince a Dartmouth undergraduate either that computers are to be feared or that they are of little use will be met with well-founded scorn,”

https://history-computer.com/software/basic-programming-lang...

BASIC was largely supplanted by other languages, but it continued to evolve into things like Visual BASIC, which became a popular rapid development environment for GUI apps. Modern BASICs support modules, objects, and other features that you might expect.

FORTRAN (now Fortran) has continued to evolve, and remains popular as a language for scientific and numerical computing, as it compiles into efficient code for CPUs and GPUs and scales from laptops to supercomputers.

Corral.BAS