My first programs were in BASIC on a pdp8/e (marketed as EDUSYSTEM 25). Nowadays I still write some of my programs in VB and VBA (Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications). The development of BASIC was a seminal event in computing. It served a very different role than COBOL or FORTRAN.
FORTRAN = Formula Translation = computer language for solving problems in engineering and science.
COBOL = COmmon Business Oriented Language = computer language for solving business oriented problems (banking, finance, etc.)
BASIC = Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code = language conceived as a very simple way to get people computing who did not have advanced degrees in math or engineering.
Each of these is a "General Purpose Programming Language." In theory, a program written in any of them could be rewritten using the other languages. In practice, each of them has certain kinds of things that they are adapted to. Early versions of FORTRAN had very primitive ways of handling text data, but often came with extensive libraries for doing statistics and scientific computation. BASIC was passably good at many things and was easy to use. Since early versions were interpreted (instead of compiled), it was easy to get into a development rhythm, but the code executed much more slowly. COBOL was an inherently good security mechanism as most hackers would not spend two seconds trying to figure it out - and would not brag about it, if they did.
