Fortunately for you BASIC has risen from the dead. It's now been ported to the Parrot runtime engine. And for you naysayers who think BASIC is all washed up, it's even more advanced than Perl 6!

Feature	BASIC	Perl 6
Easy to learn syntax	Yes!	Still Unknown
Large base of existing software	Yes!	Still Unknown
Speed	Faster than Perl 6!	Stationary
Runtime	Parrot	Still unimplemented

And much, much more.

:)