I originally intended to make a whole calculator app in an ASCII hexdump of the exe header + machine code. However, I got one function in and couldn't do it anymore. But after that experience, I now know more about what the exact problems with programming in machine code are. And with that knowledge I started building the editor for machine code that I've been wanting to do since my previous Handmade jam entry, AmpItUp. I now have a somewhat working editor for machine code. I'm going to fix it up a bit more, maybe do a post explaining what's going on in this screenshot, then try making a calculator app that I'd actually use instead of calc.exe. Here's a screenshot of the editor so far:
Also I thought it was funny to paraphrase Thoreau for a response to the "why program in machine code?" question:
I programmed in machine code because I wished to program deliberately, to front only the essential facts of programming, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not programmed. I did not wish to do what was not programming, programming is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to program deep and suck out all the marrow of programming, to program so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not programming, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive programming into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.