> I wonder, what about this makes a native code compiler difficult, is it because most programs protect against this sort of behaviors? or that programs are sto

> I wonder, what about this makes a native code compiler difficult, is it because most programs protect against this sort of behaviors? or that programs are stored in read-only memory? Say you're trying to "translate" a Uxn program into x86 code. The easiest way to do this is by going through each of the instructions in the program one by one, then converting it to an equivalent sequence of x86 instructions. (There is a little complexity around handling jumps/branches, but it's not too bad.) But if the Uxn program is allowed to change its own code at runtime, that kind of conversion won't work. The Uxn program can't change the x86 code because it doesn't know what x86 code looks like--it only knows about Uxn code. There are some ways around this, but either they're really slow (eg by switching back to an interpreter when the Uxn code has been modified) or much more complex (eg a JIT compiler) or don't work all the time (due to the halting problem).