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Comment by Freebytes | Hacker News Reader

In the past, BASIC was certainly the easiest programming language to use, but ironically, many newer programming languages are now actually easier to learn. Yes, BASIC is easy, but Python, PHP, and C# are actually just as easy as the old syntax when it comes to web based solutions.

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> Python, PHP, and C# are actually just as easy as the old syntax

I'd really dispute that.

I've never looked at C# but no member of the C or greater curly-braces family is genuinely easy. It's just familiarity.

Python is a mess in places because the C libraries underneath show through.

This ugly mess:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#printf-style...

PHP is an ugly mess from "Hello, world" on up.

I don't think the idea behind PureBasic and SpiderBasic was simplicity. (One alluring property of PureBasic has been the ability to do inline ASM... But in a speedy production environment.)

It's proably more like "there was a time in which computers were shipped with their own programming language, and it was BASIC (interfaced to ROM and machine code)". So, it's "BASIC as the fundamental coding tool your computer should have been shipped with".

  I'd definitely recommend Python to newbies over any other language.

Something that languages like Visual BASIC or SpiderBasic get right is including an opinionated GUI toolkit which is well integrated with the language and straightforward to use.

Less flexibility than Python or JavaScript, but standardized, relatively easy to use, and always there by default.

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