QBasic is actually still a great first language for children, particularly non-native English speakers. In this case, the syntax is really easy to grasp, simple UPPERCASE commands with lowercase arguments. No need to wrestle with getting closures right, etc.
I had quite a bit of success digging QBasic with our son (10yo back then), using this great tutorial which I translated to our language: http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/
Eventually, though, the son dropped his QBasic explorations (I consider it "my fault", since I got burdened with other stuff and couldn't help him as much as I wanted to). And - he dropped it in order to first take up Scratch and then dig straight into - duh! - Python. There ya go. I do think he will need some time to get closures etc intuitively right; in this regard, QBasic was, IMO, indeed, easier to grasp.
I was happy to find a great children-friendly IDE for Python, though - Mu: https://codewith.mu/
Not as "immersive" as the excellent (!) QBasic IDE and its blue screen, but still great. No bloat. F5 for launching the program, etc - and our son started to notice and carefully analyze the interpreter's error messages from first try all by himself. So, all in all, really happy with Mu.
I had quite a bit of success digging QBasic with our son (10yo back then), using this great tutorial which I translated to our language: http://tedfelix.com/qbasic/
Eventually, though, the son dropped his QBasic explorations (I consider it "my fault", since I got burdened with other stuff and couldn't help him as much as I wanted to). And - he dropped it in order to first take up Scratch and then dig straight into - duh! - Python. There ya go. I do think he will need some time to get closures etc intuitively right; in this regard, QBasic was, IMO, indeed, easier to grasp.
I was happy to find a great children-friendly IDE for Python, though - Mu: https://codewith.mu/
Not as "immersive" as the excellent (!) QBasic IDE and its blue screen, but still great. No bloat. F5 for launching the program, etc - and our son started to notice and carefully analyze the interpreter's error messages from first try all by himself. So, all in all, really happy with Mu.