Why is portability considered so important?

Successful software is long-lived; life-spans of decades are not uncommon. A good application/program often outlives the hardware it was designed for, the operating system it was written for, the data base system it initially used, etc. Often, a good piece of software outlives the companies that supplied the basic technologies used to build it.

Often a successful application/program have customers/users who prefer a variety of platforms. The set of desirable platforms change as the user population changes. Being tied to a single platform or single vendor, limits the application/program’s potential use.

Obviously, complete platform independence is incompatible with the ability to use all platform specific facilities. However, you can often approximate platform independence for an application by accessing platform facilities through a “thin interface” representing the application’s view of its environment as a library.