I got the idea from an old post on here called Story of Mel[0] where OP talks about the beauty of Mel's intricate machine code on a RPC-4000.
This is the part that always stuck with me:
I have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal. Mel was, I think, an unsung genius.