After playing with the ELF format for a few days, it's starting to sink in that binaries need to specify the location of the data segment, but the locations of the stack and heap are the kernel's prerogative.

Obvious with hindsight.

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Lately I've been programming in raw (32-bit x86) machine code, evolving some minimal tooling for error checking rather than information hiding. A few different ways to write the same instruction ("mov ebx, 42"):

1. <binary>
2. `bb 2a 00 00 00`
3. `bb 42/imm32` (todo: check that `bb` accepts an imm32)
4. `mov_imm 42/imm32` (planned; like Forth, no overloading names) It'll eventually start getting more high level.
5. String literals.
6. Function calls.
7. ...

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