Yeah it's interesting that both Atari and Commodore dropped the ball on the BASIC options for their 16-bit machines introduced at the same time. ST BASIC was also crappy, and it wasn't until later that better third party options became available (GFA BASIC was really good, as was HiSoft BASIC, but both came later).

In large part the C64 and Apple II had their success because it was easy for owners to make the transition from hobbyist to programmer by starting with the built-in BASIC and just working up. BASIC was right there in front of you, always accessible, and you basically _had_ to learn it to use the machine. So it created a ready supply of new content producers.

To program the ST effectively you really needed a C compiler, but of course back in those days that was not cheap at all or even readily available (or very fun on a machine with no hard drive, which was the common situation.)

I can't help but wonder if those platforms could have had better success if they'd just shipped out of the box with a decent BASIC, an assembler, and maybe even a C compiler. Or at least had that available on launch day for a price accessible to hobbyists.