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BASIC is a poorly designed language by modern standard, nobody uses it anymore. Some other old languages are remarkably decent, though. Pascal is occasionally used in school, but I don't quite know why.
If you want a stepstone to learn computer programming, Python serves the purpose.
My understanding is that BASIC was intended to teach programming, and was not intended to be used as a language to develop commercial applications.
I learned programming with BASIC in 1979, one of the first Apple Computers. That was the only language you could use on that, except assembly, which I never could understand.
I started a university in 1982 and they had just switched from FORTRAN to Pascal. They had also switched from cards to video monitors.
Do they still use BASIC or Pascal for teaching?
Only in a few business courses. Visual Basic is still mildly popular for corporate middleware - but it's being phased out in favor of C#.
My understanding is that BASIC was intended to teach programming, and was not intended to be used as a language to develop commercial applications.
That's what I understand as well, that it was developed as a tool to help teach the though process of programming, not to be an operational language. But it actually was so useful that a couple iterations later, it was a pretty capable language on it's own.
I started out using BASIC and FORTRAN 4. Learned just a little Pascal and a tiny bit of C. There are now so many tools such as MATLAB and R, that a lot of people don't really program any more, but use the tools. Where I work there are so many generations of computers in use, I couldn't say what the modern version of BASIC as a teaching tool is, though I guess PYTHON is probably the closest.
My understanding is that BASIC was intended to teach programming, and was not intended to be used as a language to develop commercial applications.
Probably it was the language chosen to teach in the 90s.
I was a TA during my first year in CS Ph.D. program and we used Java and Python for introductory classes.
I heard that some schools use Fortran and Pascal, but BASIC is totally obsolete. The only exception is Visual Basic for Excel, but that's sort of different from original BASIC I learned as a kid.
What language is currently being taught to beginners?
Python, for sure. Others also, I imagine, but defo Python.
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