14. Under the von Neumann architecture, a program and its data are both stored in memory. It is therefore possible for a program
, thinking that a memory location holds a piece of data when it actually holds a program instruction, to accidentally (or on purpose) modify itself. What implications does this present to you as a programmer?
This sort of scenario can be very problematic for a programmer. When writing code, pieces of code are designed to connect with each other and depend on specific information provided by other blocks of code. If one of these blocks of code or programs modifies itself and changes even the smallest value, then the code will output a completely different value or instruction that was intended by the programmer when initially creating the code. This tiny change can cause the entire code/program to fail and give an error that would be very difficult to fix.
