Why is GW-BASIC still taught in schools? [closed]

Question

I dunno about USA and the UK, but in India, schools still teach GW-BASIC. Yes, it's:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

As far as my experience goes, even writing assembler is easier than this mess of a language. It could easily be replaced by something like Python, which would make it easier for students to actually understand the basic concepts of programming and help them to understand the logic behind what they're doing better.

Answer 1

Because Basic is the most uhh... basic introduction into von-Neumann architecture which is what all modern computers and (by extension) programming languages are based on.

Think about it:

• Line numbers = Memory Addresses
• Variables = CPU Registers
• Current Line = CPU Instruction Pointer
• Goto = Jump instruction