BASIC was my own personal intro to programming. First on an HP3000 mainframe while in high school in the seventies, and later GWBASIC on a Columbia luggable in the 80's. Someone... I think it may have been David Brin, wrote a great article a few years back about the lack of an ubiquitous, easy to access interpreted language that any kid with a computer could discover and begin using. I think it's a valid complaint, but probably not addressable given all the platform and library dependencies these days. Python comes close.
