This does "approach the simplicity of "SCREEN 12" and immediately being able to use POINT, LINE, CIRCLE etc.":

#!/usr/bin/python
from pygame import *
pantalla = display.set_mode((0, 0), FULLSCREEN)
draw.rect(pantalla, 128, (50, 100, 200, 400))
display.flip()
time.delay(2000)

That's from https://github.com/kragen/pyconar-talk/blob/master/helloneg1.... There are some more examples in that directory. They use PyGame, though, which isn't installed by default like POINT.

By default Python comes with Tkinter, though, which lets you do this:

from tkinter import * # or Tkinter in Python 2
w = Tk()
button(w, text="Not OK", command=w.destroy).pack()

That's a fuckload more than you can do graphically in GW-BASIC.

For graphics, though, you're better off in JS and DHTML. In http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/tweetfract.html I have an HTML canvas which renders a fractal if you click on it, in 140 bytes:

<canvas onclick="c=this.getContext('2d');
function d(x,y,k){c.fillRect(x,y,1,1);
(k/=2)>1&&(d(x,y,k),d(x,y+=k,k),d(x+k,y,k))
}d(0,0,150)">

Moreover, if you put that on the web, you can link anyone in the world to it, and they can run it just by clicking the link. And you don't have to start that complicated; this works too:

<b onclick='this.style.color="red"'>DO NOT CLICK ME</b>

You don't even need a server; you can put that into the address bar of your browser as data:text/html,<b onclick='this.style.color="red"'>DO NOT CLICK ME</b>.

LÖVE2D comes with a bunch of simple examples, like https://github.com/love2d-community/LOVE-Example-Browser/blo...:

-- Example: Loading an Image and displaying it
--[[Description:
Load an image using love.graphics.newImage(image_path)
Draw it using love.graphics.draw
]]

function love.load()
image = love.graphics.newImage("assets/love-ball.png")
end

function love.draw()
love.graphics.draw(image, 400, 300)
end

LÖVE is programmable in Lua, like Minetest and WoW, and it gives you rotatable, alpha-composited 2-D sprites with collision detection and particle systems.

But Proce55ing is the paragon of this stuff. http://sketchpad.cc/, which uses processing.js, starts you off with this:

// Pressing Control-R will render this sketch.
int i = 0;
void setup() { // this is run once.
// set the background color
background(255);
// canvas size (Integers only, please.)
size(300, 300);
// smooth edges
smooth();
// limit the number of frames per second
frameRate(30);
// set the width of the line.
strokeWeight(12);
}

void draw() { // this is run repeatedly.
// set the color
stroke(random(50), random(255), random(255), 100);
// draw the line
line(i, 0, random(0, width), height);
// move over a pixel
if (i < width) {
i++;
} else {
i = 0;
}
}

That just fucking blows away anything I ever created in years of messing with GW-BASIC. And sketchpad.cc lets you edit your code in real time with someone else, and also save a link to the sketch you've made so that anyone else can see it. Still, I translated it to Python for my talk about this stuff at PyCon Ar (https://github.com/kragen/pyconar-talk/blob/master/hello1.py):

#!/usr/bin/python
from pygame import *
from random import randrange

pantalla = display.set_mode((0, 0), FULLSCREEN)
ww, hh = pantalla.get_size()

color = Color(64, 64, 192)

for xx in range(0, ww, 5):
h, s, v, a = color.hsva
color.hsva = xx * 270 / ww, s, v, a # cambiar hue

draw.line(pantalla, # surface
color,
(xx, 20), # punto de inicio
(randrange(ww), hh - 20), # punto de terminar
10) # ancho de rayo
display.flip() # para mostrar

Maybe the biggest environment for this kind of thing nowadays is Roblox, which has a couple of million people writing games in Lua in a 3-D world. It's not free software, but neither was GW-BASIC at the time.

Eat me, GW-BASIC.