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Wow ... some of these letters are like New Math all over again.
Brin wants the classic BASIC precisely because of its limitations. The moment you say the word 'compiler' you are at least one order of magnitude too complex. Your modern programmer can probably do algebra in their sleep -- but kids still get shown two apples and two more apples and asked how many apples they have now. The point of the ultra-limited BASIC was not to enable the accomplishment of useful tasks, but to help the development of useful ways to think about the world.
Most of the more modern languages are also vastly less redundant in their coding style, with Perl and C being good examples. BASIC, by contrast, gives you lots more surface area to read and understand what the computer is doing for you, even while it reduces the possible range of what it can represent. This lack of efficiency is the kiss of death to a professional programmer, but it is exactly what a 9 year old needs.
Line-by-line programming is like learning to speak sentences. Eventually we want them to plan out that book report, but first we just want a good sentence to come out of their mouths. At some point, kids might write a program too big to be comfortably understood in BASIC. At that point, it will be time to move on.
