The difference is that on those old 8-bit microcomputers BASIC was the standard way to write programs. The only other choice was assembly language, which was mostly used by games for performance reasons. So BASIC programs written by the user really were first class citizens.

While you technically can write a Python program in Microsoft's terrible terminal window, such a program is a very distant second class citizen in the Windows ecosystem. This adds to the friction the poster above is referring to.