I used BASIC for all kind of stuff when I still had a windows network stack...QuickBASIC was so easy to use and compile executables, I wrote everything in it, including some RSS feed parsers for things.
I miss it's simplicity. Python is supposed to be the "new" BASIC, but all that shit and semicolons and case types floating around just don't stick in my head. I guess I'm old.
I bought an HP Basic compiler from a company called Infotek (dunno if it's related to any same named company today) around 1985 for that HP Basic running homebrew rack and stack test system I mentioned earlier. On my final version of the OS code, the execution time for the interpreted HP Basic was around 10.5 Seconds on a reference device. That was orders of magnitude more efficient than what it replaced (manual bench testing), but I wasn't happy. We needed more throughput, we had built 6 of these systems. Equipment utilization was nearly maxed out. I just about had to beg management for the money to buy the compiler vs build more testers <smdh>. The executable knocked the test time for the same reference device down to 1.5s, which increased throughput by 4X !!! ... for the price of a compiler! I saved the compsny a lot of money on that project start to finish! It was a big win. If BASIC execution time is important to you, a compiler is the only way to begin to approach the speed of compiled C code.
Back in the golden age...
... early days of test floor automation, networking; low hanging fruit everwhere I looked, and an antiquated management with their heads in the '60s. I'm thankful I had those opportunities regardless. I had a blast. Ronald Reagan's Star Wars or whatever he called it caused Fairchild to hire more people to staff for a dramatic increase in new govt contracts, and I got hired as a result. So I have a personal reason to thank Reagan. I can see Trump doing similar things to drive demand in America. There should be more opportunity than we ever saw, coming soon.