The most useless computer program ever made

Ah yes… I remember now why I gave up on compiling the assembly files from class on Linux. It wasn’t because it was too hard (though, yeah, CCS doesn’t do assembly, so you need to go the makefile/manual compilation/linking/etc route.) It was because the files I want to test are in Keil ARM assembly, and the GCC toolchain needs GNU ARM assembly. Which is very similar! Just a few syntax changes! If only there were some tool, maybe the most hyped piece of software of the modern era, that was supposed to be good at… switching words around?

So I paste a file into chatgpt and asked it to translate this keil arm assembly file into gnu arm assembly. Sure, it says, and begins spitting out… the exact same file. I’m staring at a reference document for gnu assembly. “You’re just giving me the exact same file back,” I tell it. “Apologies for the oversight!” it says, as if not doing anything and pretending you did is just some minor technical error. It tries again, and does seem to be producing something maybe correct, after the first few lines which for some reason it decides to leave unchanged. It stops a quarter of the way through with a button that says “continue?” which I press. (Did I fucking stutter?) It does another quarter, then stops. “That’s not the end,” I inform it. It does another few lines, then stops. I give up and go do something more useful with my time.

If it can’t do this– the kind of simple, rote task that computers are supposed to be good at–