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I guess everyone is allowed a "why has the world changed for the worse" rant, but this is an exceptionally silly one. There is no shortage of young people getting hooked on programming, either through current languages like LOGO or VB or Python or Ruby or Java, or the Mindstorms language - and there is no shortage of new programming ideas, from web 2.0 new new types of hardware, and of course, lots of stuff that has nothing to do with computers.
But clunky BASIC as Brin experienced it was just ... clunky. What does matter is that there are tools to capture a child's imagination and empower it. And in that regard I think we've gone backwards quickly in the last five years - and arguably, US education has been awful and getting worse since before I was a child - no child allegedly left behind or no. Unfortunately, the lack of Apple BASIC is entirely irrelevant to that problem.
