BASIC for me and thousands of others was the chance to write some very simple code and see it do something. Me, as a kid, could control a computer:

10 PRINT "Hello World!"
20 GOTO 10

HTML offers the same quick reward system because I write the following, save it and view it:

<title>Hello World</title>
<body>Remy waved excitedly</body>

The reason HTML works as the BASIC of the web is [covered perfectly by Aral](http://twitter.com/aral/status/18422012038):

The beauty of BASIC was that it was zero-install, ubiquitous, single-tool, instant-reward (interpreted/instant-run).

The browser is the interpreter - instant reward and completely ubiquitous. Forget the arguments that HTML is or isn’t a programming language - we’re talking about accessibility and ease of learning. HTML has both of those licked.

Kids are way ahead compared to when we were kids. They have MySpace & Facebook pages, they’re constantly exposed to the web, and they know about [view source](http://adactio.com/journal/1550/). They know how to email a file to friends (i.e. their hello world page), and they’ll [quickly find a free hosting](http://twitter.com/anna_debenham/status/18423141122) solution akin to geocities or angelfire - so don’t worry, you’ll soon be able to find their pink flashing neon web sites, because…​

HTML is the BASIC of the web.