== Simplify maintenance? == 

 Quote from the frist line: "In computer science, self-modifying code is code that alters its own instructions while it is executing - usually to reduce the instruction path length and improve performance or simply to reduce otherwise repetitively similar code, thus simplifying maintenance." 

 How does self modifying code simplify maintenance? It seems like it actually makes maintenance harder since it is usually more difficult to figure out what the hell is going on.