Portability is the ability of software to move easily from one hardware platform to another. UNIX was the first portable operating system, allowing programs to compile on multiple hardware platforms without the need for the programmer to rewrite code especially for each type of hardware platform.
True application development for portability makes use of modular programming that avoids assumptions about the hardware it will be running on and is, therefore, not machine-dependent. This means that an application running under UNIX should be able to run on any UNIX system regardless of the hardware configuration of the system platform.
Please respond to all of the following prompts:
- UNIX is highly portable. What is portability? What makes UNIX so portable?
- Why is portability so important?