An article at Salon today laments the lack of ubiquitous BASIC interpreters on today's computers. You see, back when the author was cutting his teeth on computers, he had to get down and dirty with "line-programming languages like BASIC" where he learned the basics of algorithms and how computers work.

I'm sure that this argument was made when he was learning BASIC by those who learned to program computers by flipping switches, and watched their programs light up flashing LEDs on the front panel. Yep, those were sure exciting times.

There's nothing magical about BASIC that can't be taught using other programming languages. I certainly don't advocate teaching children the language du jour, but the fundamental concepts of computing can be taught without having to resort to buying Commodore 64s on ebay.