I learned exactly this way, with GWBASIC, with the same program. It's why I chose this program as the start of "The Rust Programming Language", honestly. Similar to your point about Python, it's more complex. Then again, so are computers...

I'm lucky enough to still have the book for my first computer, my second encounter with BASIC. I tweeted some photos of it last year https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/721471207883808769