"Why would anyone want to start someone young with outdated concepts such as BASIC?"
When I first learned to program about 40 years ago (jeez, I'm old), it was a commonly held stance that nobody should be exposed to BASIC until they have already learned at least one other language. This is because BASIC lets you get away with terrible programming practices and so it brought a risk that new programmers would learn bad habits far too early in the game.
I still think there's merit to that argument.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
