If you think BASIC was free and open have I got a letter from Bill Gates to show you.
GCC is free and open. Clang is free and open. BASIC is commercial, proprietary, closed-source software.
The "bedrock of computer science" is machine code, or if you're not a fan of reading and writing hex values or flipping physical switches on your Altair, then assembly. Everything after that is an abstraction.
Gates' copyrights on implementations of BASIC don't interest me. Blackjack, bubble sort and tower of hanoi in human-readable BASIC do.
C isn't suitable for most K-8 students. Explain malloc while I handle PRINT, INPUT, PEEK and POKE. We'll meet at memory registers and see whose student feels more confident.
You've created a layer cake of abstractions with your OS, advanced filesystem and C compiler (plus libraries). I presume a mouse and metaphorical desktop "icing" are included.
LOL what? BASIC has been around since before Microsoft was even a glint in Gates & Allen’s eyes. Since 1964 to be exact.
While many 8-bit versions of BASIC were derived from MS BASIC (1975) it was hardly Microsoft’s baby. Atari BASIC for example has zero to do with MS. Neither does TinyBASIC
BASIC itself is absolutely free. Certain implementations are not.
GCC is free and open. Clang is free and open. BASIC is commercial, proprietary, closed-source software.
The "bedrock of computer science" is machine code, or if you're not a fan of reading and writing hex values or flipping physical switches on your Altair, then assembly. Everything after that is an abstraction.