I'm only 29 and have memorable experiences playing with my father's C64. I consider myself lucky that he introduced me to C64+BASIC at an early age. I will never forget it.
I think our family already owned a Gateway 2000 PC (66/90MHz, Win 95) by then, but I actually liked the C64 more. Second favorite was the Atari 1040ST, the PC came last.
The C64 is a crucial element that got me into programming/CPUs/Hardware. I went from BASIC to QBasic, then to VisualBasic 3, then 5. After that I got my own PC my father bought me Visual Basic 6, students edition. In retrospective, this has to be the best investment of 120DM (Deutsche Mark) ever made. It fueled my interest even more. I was finally able to write my own 'real' Windows programs. I suddenly had access to everything, from DFU dialups, window managment, Browsers (ActiveX!). It even introduced me to 2D/3D graphics because you can use DirectX/DirectDraw directly. All thanks to the Windows API and Visual Basic.
It took a long time until I finally got into Linux and C++, but I never regret that I was introduced to BASIC first, and was taught that GOTO is not evil.
PS: If you have kids and want to introduce them to programming, give them access to Blitz BASIC!
I often think of the Raspberry PI as the modern equivalent to the c64. Affordable, powerful, educational. It would be great to develop a specialized Raspberry PI BASIC in tribute to Blitz or QBASIC.
It's too complex. The thing with machines like the C64, 8-bit Ataris and Apple IIs is that they were simple and easy to fully understand. Even the hardware of a Pi, with its multiple buses, protocols and embedded controllers running their own OSs, would require a degree in engineering to fully grasp. On the software side, there are multiple man-centuries invested.