The real question is what self-respecting programmer would instinctively reach for BASIC as the language to write a joke in? Methinks this says more about the jokester than he wanted to say...
Vouch. I remember spending the entirety of my math class writing games on my TI-83+. I still hate my instructor for wiping my memory when she thought I was playing them and not writing them.
I remember the day I discovered an assembly program that mimicked a memory wipe, but could be restored with a hotkey combination. I was so damn smug after that.
I don't understand what you mean. Are you referring to some pro or con within BASIC or BaCon, or are you referring to the sentence being incorrect (given that "both" should be "neither")? Regardless, I like BaCon because it's easy, fast, updated regularly, and passes cleanly through to C. My black, British cat, Mr. Fluffer Wickbidget, III, also likes bacon. You may think that fact is not relevant here, but it is when you run out milk, as I now see that I have.
I modified the hello world example on Wikipedia. I have to say, brainfuck is nowhere near as difficult to understand once you get used to the syntax. Kind of reminds me of ARM Assembly, in a way.