Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "What NOT to do: Self Modifying Code - Computerphile" video.

  1. The genetic code is self-replicating, if you consider the rest of the cell as some kind of general-purpose manufacturing machine.
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  2. That seems to be done for Apple’s corporate control purposes, not to safeguard the user.
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  3. Other platforms can implement security controls without forcing developers to go through a central vetting authority.
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  4. Think of it as implementing a higher-level abstract machine on top of a lower-level one. Only the lower-level machine is generating the higher-level abstraction on the fly.
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  5. All it did was modify an index register that could only point at one of a set of labels.
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  6.  @TheOwlman  Well, that’s a problem with ICL, not the COBOL spec.
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  7.  @TheOwlman  In general that’s true of any variable: when it’s value is changed, there’s no “visible logic” to indicate it no longer has the value it was given at initialization time. So nothing too special about COBOL’s ALTER statement: it’s just a specialized form of assignment.
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  8.  @TheOwlman  It’s not as well structured as a case-statement, it is true. But given that you cannot assign arbitrary expressions in an ALTER statement, it is still possible to gather all the possible values of the switch-variable simply by finding all the places where it is mentioned.
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  9.  @fixups6536  It’s a switch statement. Quite a common feature in languages today, albeit in a more structured form.
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