BASIC

BASIC: n.  [acronym Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic
   Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for
   Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s,
   which has since become the leading cause of brain-damage in
   proto-hackers.  Edsger Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings
   on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically
   impossible to teach good programming style to students that have
   had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
   mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.".  This is another
   case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading lossage that happens when
   a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken
   too seriously.  A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the
   order of 10--20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer is (a)
   very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it
   harder to use more powerful languages well.  This wouldn't be so
   bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end
   micros.  As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.

   [1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any
   more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control
   structures and shed their line numbers. -- ESR]