Just to point out: these days you don't have to use the dosbox/qbasic combo in order to have a qbasic-compatible environment. There is an open-source implementation called qb64 that is both qbasic compatible and cross-platform (Windows, Linux and Mac).
Also, in qbasic, line number is optional. With SUB and FUNCTION, you can actually do structured programming like what other programming languages such as Pascal does.
> All in all, it seems like I could have done pretty advanced Bayesian statistics using the computational tools I had access to 20 years ago! (Of course, one could easily have implemented a similar program in C or FORTRAN much much earlier…)
Turbo Pascal 3, available not later than 1986, had already much nicer syntax, was a real compiler, had a fast IDE and the ability to draw.
We snicker at BASIC today, but it was more than just a language to write toy games in on your Commodore 64. To engineers, scientists, and other mathy numbersy types, it was the MATLAB of the era.
Also, in qbasic, line number is optional. With SUB and FUNCTION, you can actually do structured programming like what other programming languages such as Pascal does.