So that is only true because we do it, there is a world where we optimize differently and that self modifying version works better, reread the synthesis kernel thesis(one, it is super easy, two they did this), we could have hardware that does this. Because we don't have hardware that does this we don't

FWIW if you look at WebKit/JavaScriptCore, the trend has been towards less-frequent code modification, e.g. inline caches are mostly no longer repatched inline. Whole-function reoptimization is still worth the overhead of sys_icache_invalidate() + `ISB`'ing everyone involved, but at smaller granularities not so much.