Resourceful Code Reuse

Harnessing Dynamic Loading

Dynamic loading is a technique of changing the code executed by a process (a running program) on the fly as the process runs. External code may be added to or removed from the process as necessary.

At first glance, dynamic loading looks like an example of self-modifying code (SMC). Self-modifying code was hyped in the 1980s as a means to implement adaptable machine learning systems that would learn by reconfiguring their data and algorithms. Another fancy application of SMC was in computer viruses that would disguise themselves to hide their presence from signature-matching antivirus software.

It was soon concluded that SMC was more of a problem than a solution. In the first place, it makes a program in memory ...