Commodore BASIC (which was really a variant of Microsoft BASIC IIRC) was so awful.
No drawing commands. No real control over the computer's graphics modes. Very limited control over sprites. No great commands for the SID (arguably the best soundchip of any 8-bit system). Everything is done with POKEs and magic numbers. Slow as hell. And the list goes on.
Just dreadful.
I'd go as far as to say that in many of the ways that mattered, and even taking into account the weird key combinations required to write code, and the fact that it wasn't particularly well regarded either, but I think Sinclair BASIC on the ZX Spectrum range was actually better. You had drawing commands, you had sound commands (although the PLAY command on the 128K honestly didn't give you that much access to the power of the Yamaha FM soundchip so it still wasn't great, and on 48K you were limited to BEEP). You didn't have sprites but you had UDGs and they were easy to use. And I think it might have run faster - it certainly felt faster.
It did still have some annoying oversights: e.g., want to read the joystick? Well, I can't remember the damned address but in the end I figured out enough to realise I was going to have to PEEK the right location in memory, which I duly did after a quick study of the memory map and trying out a bunch of different addresses.
Anyway, point is I remember being so frustrated when I upgraded/crossgraded from a ZX Spectrum 128K +2A to a C64 with how difficult it was to get anything done in BASIC.
I thought C64 BASIC was just as good as any other BASIC at the time. BASIC is, well... "basic", and even with POKEs and everything else, we still did quite a bit with C64 BASIC.
I started on Atari BASIC and that BASIC was pretty bad, too, but even so I made use of it and did all kinds of graphics stuff, and wrote games, etc.
I did all kinds of stuff in BASIC on the C64 between 1986 and into the 90's. But, after a few months of learning all about BASIC, I went right into Assembly language. The C64 manual taught BASIC, but it also had the memory map and documentation about all the 6510 opcodes, registers, custom chips, and even a schematic of the computer in the back. It was incredible compared to all other computers at the time, because it was made for DIY, you could go as deeply as you wanted with it.
I created so many cool things with the C64, got into the Demoscene, and made crack intros, etc. I even wrote some code to do 3D vector rotations in C64 BASIC and displayed the data with an assembly language line drawing routine.
I don't know you, but if you couldn't do amazing things with the C64, that says more (to me) about you than it does the C64. And like all machines, the system is what it is, you either make use of it or you don't.
I had a C64 as a kid (~13 years old), and like you, after doing as much as I could do in BASIC, I knew I had to learn machine language. I saved up money and bought the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide, learned the opcodes, the memory map, how to work with peripherals, and so on, but had no way to actually input and assemble programs, so I was stuck. The book referred to the 64MON cartridge, but as a little kid I had no idea where/how to get it. I ended up writing writing a few programs on paper, hand converting them into numbers to POKE into memory and then SYS to them, but obviously that was the really hard way to do anything.
It wasn't until my dad sold the C64 and upgraded the family to a C128 (with a built in assembler/monitor) that I finally got to try my programs, but by that time, the 8 bit world was winding down and everyone was moving to PCs. To this day I wish C64 shipped with the 64MON cartridge.
My first experiments with machine code were using POKE statements too. Once I knew that I knew what I was doing, I got deeper into it. Fortunately around the same time I got a 300baud modem and found some assembley language tools on BBSs. The modem was key, it opened up a much wider world to me. I learned all kinds of programming tricks from others, like how to disassemble and read other's programs.
I was about your age with the same interest in the system internals. I wonder if I owned the Programmer's Reference Guide. However, I decided that my programming directly in assembly wouldn't be productive or possible. I subscribed to Compute!'s Gazette, and there were plenty of type-in BASIC programs, as well as the crazy machine-language data-entry bonanzas that yielded arcade games and a word processor.
I did my own BASIC programming, and I was satisifed with experimenting at that level. It was the systems architecture that enthralled me, though. Just to peruse the diagrams of how RAM and ROM were laid out; the bank switching; registers and I/O routines; programming the SID chip; sprites and colors and fonts.
By the time I went into college I was quite well-primed for subjects like systems architecture, and the upgrade path at home from 286 to Windows PCs was bittersweet, as I left behind those raw system internals for more opacity and high-level sysadmin tasks. But I never forgot the 6502 and 6510 that started it all for me.
C64 BASIC was bad compared to BASIC on the Spectrum, and terrible compared to BBC BASIC on the Acorn machines. Sure, you could POKE your way to doing everything, but compared to having OS routines for most things, and an assembler accessible from BASIC it was hard work.
Commodore BASIC was pretty bad because Tramiel had bought a permanent license to Microsoft BASIC back in 1977, for the PET, and saw no reason to upgrade for the VIC or 64.
Teaching myself BASIC on a Commodore 64 in elementary school made me a programmer and set the direction for the next 40 years. Different strokes I guess.
The same for me. I only knew how to assign variables, use for loops, if->then, and use poke command. And from this specific point I started thinking about myself as programmer event that the only thing I wrote with C64 basic was a ball moving on the screen. :)
As a counterpoint, I taught myself BASIC and some simple music theory on my C64 hooked up to a black and white TV in elementary school when I was 10. I think it all depends on where you are in life and what 'clicks' with you at the time.
