Basic is still alive and well, providing a simple programming environment for beginners.

It has returned to being a hobbyist scene, just like in the 80s. Basic compilers are written by hobbyists for hobbyists.

For native applications my favourite is PureBasic: http://www.purebasic.com/

It's a nice variant that compiles to a tiny, dependency free executables for Windows, Linux and OSX.

It also provides a nice gateway to the underlying assembler. http://www.purebasic.com/documentation/reference/inlinedasm....

It also has an online version called Spider Basic that compiles to JavaScript: http://www.spiderbasic.com/