How much is down to the language and how much is that to do with the capability of computers then vs now. A fair few dialects of BASIC could manipulate the hardware directly but the capability of those machines were always quite limited. However with the hacker community going strong for retro hardware, you can now get all sorts of cool mods, like the WiFi addon I have on my Amstrad CPC 464 which allows me to even make HTTP GET requests, from BASIC. Ok I'm still limited by 64K of memory but that just forces you to think more creatively.
I'm not denying that Python teaches better programming principles than the early dialects of BASIC, but again how much of that is down to age given than newer dialects of BASIC can be structured very much like a typical imperative program. ie no requirement for line numbers, proper functions (though some dialects of BASIC have supported this since the 80s), etc.
Sometimes though, I think the simplicity of your environment can count for a lot. I remember reading an interview with a dance DJ turned producer who commented that he regretted buying lots of hardware when he was starting out as it slowed his learning curving (too much tech to learn in one go) and thus he would have been better off buying one synth, mastering that, then moving onto another synth. I wonder if programming can be like that for youngsters these days. I wonder if they get crippled by the vastness of the options out there and all the layers of the stack involved in even the simplest of "Hello world!" programs. Yet BASIC on the micro computers of the 70s and 80s offered a simple, no hassle, interface to that allowed our young imaginations to fly. I think we were very lucky to grow up in that era.