The article says that BASIC isn't dead. The problem is that it mostly *is* dead as a modern tool, despite attempts to revive it- even the headline gives that away by using nostalgia as a hook.
And the reason this article seems to go in so many directions covering the different approaches is the problem with *any* discussion of BASIC in a modern context. "BASIC" isn't a single language, the environment you want to run it in isn't and the motivations for wanting to revive it vary widely. Someone looking for the experience of (say) BASIC on the Sinclair ZX81 isn't looking for the same thing as the VB revivalist. Someone (trying to) argue that it's a serious language for modern development is looking for something else again.
Ultimately, the only thing they have in common is the core syntax of BASIC, and even *that* was notoriously fluid.
Now that many of us who grew up with it have moved away from it, and we're a generation past the era where newcomers to programming gained that cosy familiarity by default, is BASIC *really* easier for doing anything modern with than (say) Javascript's C-derived syntax?
And does that ease of use make up for its clunkiness?
Sticking with BASIC superficially made sense when everyone had grown up with it on 8-bit computers during the 1980s and the syntax (and name) was comfortingly familiar.
The original 1990s Visual Basic being based on, well, BASIC(!) was understandable in that context, it was the familiar friend that helped ease people into something that- even then- was obviously more powerful and a different beast to BASIC on a ZX81, or whatever.
But is there *really* any real rationale for using BASIC today- in a recognisable form- beyond nostalgia? I'm saying that, yes, it was popular once, because it was easy to implement and integrate into 8-bit machines in a way that (say) C wasn't and easy to use. But you wouldn't go back to those days, and I'm not convinced that BASIC would be any easier for those who didn't grow up with it in the first place than numerous other languages.