Just wanted to share my opinion about one thing, hope you don't mind

Some people say BASIC is a very good language, with QBasic you can develop DOS applications quick and easy, and the same thing with VB for Windows.

Others say BASIC is the language of the devil, and should - together with all people using it - be burnt down and thrown in the sea.

I think BASIC has some advantages, not many, but still there are a few situations when even I would choose BASIC. One such situation would be a small program, to calculate something that can't be done with a normal calculator, but doesn't need the power and speed of e.g. C or assembly language. Another good thing with BASIC is that almost all platforms support it (at leats standard BASIC, with a few modifications). BASIC is the only language I can use at all my computers (of 4 different architectures), some of them from the mid 80's.

The situations where you should avoid BASIC is:
* _ANY_ kind of system programming, including shells, system software etc.
* Programs that need speed.
* Programs with any kind of structure.
* Most programs meant to be compiled.

Making games in BASIC is...funny, but not useful at all. BASIC games are usually slow, bad-looking (compared to 'real' ones, not older than 10 years, at least).

The most importan of all is of course you have fun coding, but you don't need BASIC for that Assembler, C, Pascal or other languages are in general even funnier to code in, in my opinion.

Hope you didn't get too bored.
Hope you don't code too much in BASIC.

I've been coding with BASIC a lot and I'm really enjoying it .
Usually, the reasons make C/++ more powerful also make them no fun at all .
Well, Pascal is a very moderate langauge in all ways in my opinion (power, speed, ease)...but it isn't flexible for me to feel comfortable, like having to declare variables at the beginning of each code particle. Same applies to C in a different way, I have to declare every single variable I use.
But robost86 is right, BASIC lacks the control over the computer that those famous and very powerful languages have. Though I can easily admit, that such deep control can cause much trouble (hint: try using pointers not pointing anywhere at all, no wait, don't try that) and sometimes, it's not really necessary at all .

I doubt you could write Commander Keen or Wolf3d i Basic so say like 15-20 years .

I agree though. I never learned advanced basic, only basic stuff (no word-joke intended there)... But it's certainly not a very serious prog.

I don't have any BASIC interpreter on my linux system so I write those simple progs in c or perl usually

Maltanar: Coding in C can be fun Just try something non-ANSI, like an OS, or a game. Standard BASIC is boring as hell too.