free programming language

[Yvonne Smith]

I don't actually believe I'm getting involved in this discussion, since,
again, this is my oppinion and based on what I personally have used over
the years. 

I agree with someones previous comment on basic. It's quite non-standard
and trying to work out what commands are available, and how in your
version of basic is enough to give you a headache. At least that's
certainly what I found.

My advice is either perl or python. I currently like python more than
perl, but unless your screen reader can tell you how much each line is
indented by, it could be a bit of a pain. 

The only difference from other comments here is that if you find sigwin
speech unfriendly, there are native windows implementations of perl and
python. I've never used them, but I know that active state for one has a
windows version of both.