Your aforementioned ease and familiarity probably were likely the reasons that it was used in my 1995-ish courses in mineral processing/extractive metallurgy. Regardless of the country of origin or interest in code, most of the (mostly having started uni in 1990-1992) students grasped the syntax easily. This simple-but-not-elegant backbone let us look more closely at and play with the energy and mass balances of processes like calcining and smelting ores.
In the family archives there lie at least one 5 1/4" floppy with BASIC programs (line numbers!) in case I should ever wish to again dive into roasting sulphide ores…
