[Isamu]

>it feels a bit like cheating. Because you know that somewhere, somehow, the code you write is translated to assembly instructions. To the machine language.

I think you should go all the way, show the machine code along with the assembly language. Show them that in the end it's all numbers.

Well, philosophically it's not even "numbers" per se, it's some physical tokens that are moved around in a manner that is isomorphic to a kind of arithmetic and logic.

[edit] And yes, by "physical tokens" I mean voltages and not atoms, which you can argue are not "really" what is going on ... etc

[msla]

From a pedagogical standpoint, it's a shame we've effectively lost self-modifying code. It's a very good way to show students that everything the computer does is driven by data, and the only difference between "code" and "data" is interpretation; this is the heart of the stored-program computer, as opposed to things like plugboard systems or adding machines, where the instructions were in hardware and were, therefore, a different kind of thing from the data.

It's also a good introduction to pipelines and caches, when some bright spark tries to modify the next instruction and it "doesn't take" in the way the student expects.

[chrisseaton]

> we've effectively lost self-modifying code

Why do you think we've lost it? You can still write self-modifying code today. You may need to change permissions on the pages if you have a system that doesn't allow both execution and writing at the same time, but that's easy.