On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:53:36 -0500, dpb wrote:

Gates was _WRITING_ the OS...

You're also not accounting for the time and place and state of hardware
at the time.

Self-modifying code (along w/ a lot of other "tricks") was done in years
gone by to save either memory or execution cycles or to simulate higher
level constructs that weren't yet supported (FORTRAN didn't include a
CALL statement in first releases so writing code to data and executing
it was a way to simulate it) by many. Like any other technique, it can
be (and was on occasion) abused.

Well said! You saved me from having to write something similar. I have
no fondness for Bill Gates, but that's based on his business practices,
not his coding practices :-).

I remember writing code for NASA way back when that filled a DMA buffer
with a pattern and then checked the pattern to see when I could flip the
pointers and start refilling the buffer. Or replacing one instruction
with an equivalent one because the second was a hair faster. Things were
different then.

--
Intelligence is an experiment that failed - G. B. Shaw