IntyBASIC: A Basic Compiler for Intellivision (opens in new tab)

I think Microsoft QBasic in particular was the sweet spot. It was an easy to pick up language and runtime that was powerful enough to make real productivity applications and games. It shipped with 2 great demo games, Nibbles and Gorillas, that were fun to play and easy to understand. It had a pretty good IDE and most importantly, easy to browse, beginner friendly online help. I couldn't imagine a better introduction to programming during my childhood. Best of all, it was installed by default in MS-DOS 5.0 and later.

I'm really hoping that it gets open sourced by Microsoft in the near future.

After decades of thinking I was so much more 31337 by learning other languages -- OO, functional, etc. -- I can't help but agree. BASIC is the sweet spot for introducing what programming is and the fundamental concepts. I kind of laugh when I hear talk that LLMs will finally enable nontechnical people to build their own apps, when BASIC did that back in the 60s.