Aah, I'm not alone in thinking BASIC is great

I would say this is not always the case.
For example, I can pretty much learn any programming language I need to (and have over the years learned many, and mastered a few), but when it comes to spoken languages other than English, for some reason my brain doesn’t work the same way… So I think it is more the logically layout of a programming language, as opposed to the not necessarily logical evolution of spoken languages.

Programming languages are probably way easier to master than human languages. First of all, they are logical (what is logical about spelling in English, or objects gender in French ?), then they use a limited vocabulary, and have a fixed syntax. Not to mention no pronunciation issues.