Sadly, when CODASYL committee was formed  to develop a programming language ideally suited for business data processing needs they were looking at a language that 'normal operators' could learn and that it would be similar to a human language that is why you get Cobol syntax like:<p><pre><code>     ADD YEARS TO AGE
</code></pre>
A similar motivation was for SQL. We will give you a database and a query language that anyone can use:<p><pre><code>    SELECT title FROM Book .....
</code></pre>
During the early days of computing the thought prevailed - pretty much like now - that it was a matter of 10 years before computers would be able to talk in natural languages and AI was around the corner.<p>But, you are right about BASIC that was my first language as well, quickly dropped for Turbo Pascal  which was the sort of the in-thing for a while.