I wrote very useful and much used programs in the 70s and early 80s to solve engineering, surveying and astronomic reduction programs that I could still use today if there was a modern version of the language.
The only thing I can find that comes close to the Cadillac of BASIC languages, HP BASIC, is Liberty Basic, which has been "fancied up" almost to uselessness for all but hard core programmers.
The beauty of BASIC was that literally anyone with a semi-competent mastery of math could write a program to do pretty much anything.
With the advance into 32-bit programming and with the gross advance in computer speeds, a modern BASIC would be a killer application.
Where is the modern Bill Gates?
Very good question! Are there no young teenage genius guys out there anymore?
Paul Allen wrote his BASIC interpreter for the first personal computer, the Altair, without having access to one. When he loaded it from paper tape, it worked flawlessly on the first try, as did his paper tape loading program!
VB pretty much fills that need.
I still use the latest and greatest of MS's 16 bit BASIC, BASIC 7.1 PDS, for data crunching. On a 200 mhz Pentium it screams through tedious tasks with dramatic speed. I spend zero time on user interface for many of these tasks - all processing power is devoted to the data handling. The screen simply reverts to whatever was on it prior to launching the editor until the program finishes. Then it says "Press any key to continue..."
PDS 7.1 takes advantage of expanded memory (remember that?) for array and string handling, has a neat database file engine called ISAM handling files up to 132 megabytes (remember when most hard drives weren't that big?) and can easily interface with C or assembler subroutines (functions).
At least two guys wrote some really cool add-on functions for the system, one in all assembler, one with some in assembler and some BASIC.