Searching For Home

A short poem written in FreeBASIC, hand-coded by a human learning the language for the first time alongside an AI as teacher.

The source is in poem.bas. It compiles and runs on the real FreeBASIC compiler in about 4.5 seconds.

The world is in a mess.
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

I am searching for Home...
  still wandering... H
  still wandering... Ho
  still wandering... Hom
  still wandering... Home

At last - Home.

What this project is

A small artifact of one person learning a new programming language from scratch by writing every line themselves, guided chunk-by-chunk by an AI teacher. The output is both a working program and a poem — the structure of the code carries the meaning (Goto Home as the wanderer's intent, Home: as the destination, a brute-force search as the slowness of seeking).

The repository is also a teaching resource: the 8-chunk curriculum the AI produced is preserved verbatim, so anyone can follow the same lessons and write their own version. The full reflective story of the collaboration — what worked, what surprised me, where the AI was wrong — is in JOURNEY.md.

How to run the poem

The source compiles with any real FreeBASIC compiler (fbc). Two practical paths:

In your browser (no install):

• Paste poem.bas into JDoodle's FreeBASIC compiler and click Execute.
• Or use OnlineGDB and select FreeBASIC from the language dropdown.
• ⚠️ Do not use QBJS (qbjs.org) — it does not support Goto, which is the entire structural device of this poem.

Locally (one-time install):

• Install FreeBASIC from freebasic.net.
• Run fbc poem.bas && ./poem from this directory.

How to use this project as a learning resource

If the idea interests you and you'd like to learn FreeBASIC the same way — by writing your own short poem-program alongside an AI:

1. Read JOURNEY.md to understand the working agreement: the AI teaches small chunks, you write every line.
2. Follow the chunks in order under docs/. Each chunk is a self-contained lesson with concepts, syntax examples, and a goal.
3. Open your own file in any text editor and write your own version as you go.
4. Run your program in a real FreeBASIC compiler (see above) after each chunk.

If you're interested in the broader question of how to learn anything from an AI, JOURNEY.md closes with reflections on what made this collaboration work.

Repository layout

poem.bas                          the finished poem (80 lines of FreeBASIC)
README.md                         this file
JOURNEY.md                        the reflective story of the collaboration
docs/
  chunk-1-variables.md            ┐
  chunk-2-arrays.md               │
  chunk-3-shuffle.md              │  the 8-chunk curriculum,
  chunk-4-goto.md                 │  preserved verbatim
  chunk-5-search.md               │  as the AI originally taught it
  chunk-6-swap.md                 │
  chunk-7-print.md                │
  chunk-8-arrival.md              ┘
  appendix-ai-errors.md           an honest record of the AI's three errors

Credits

• William Wong — author of the poem, writer of all code.
• Claude (Opus 4.7) — AI teacher and reviewer, by Anthropic.
• FreeBASIC — the language. freebasic.net

License

Do what you like with this. If you build something similar — your own small, hand-coded creative artifact — I'd love to see it.