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Self-modifying code isn't a bad idea. Like everything else, it has it's place, just not typically on modern computers due to breaking optimizations.

What you describe is actually used in a lot of modern software, usually self-modifying code refers to code that modifies itself while running, typically in a loop, not just generating fresh code :)

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In my opinion, compile time codegen is way better than runtime codegen. Unless you are exploring genetic algorithms, runtime codegen is slow, brittle, and undebugable. Compile time codegen, however, can produce ridiculously fast code (see FFTW), and is much easier to debug because you can look at the generated code.

> brittle and undebuggable

That's why I stopped doing it, but I totally get that in low level programming that it comes in very handy in some circumstances.

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