Portability shouldn't be under-estimated. An ex-colleague had the opportunity to re-write a bad implementation. After gathering the requirements, he had a very

Portability shouldn't be under-estimated. An ex-colleague had the opportunity to re-write a bad implementation. After gathering the requirements, he had a very nice specification which was portable, lightweight and extensible. Then management wanted to add direct SQL access because old systems had this feature and that made them fast. My ex-colleague didn't want to budge on this issue because the direct access was the reason for the re-write. Management wouldn't budge on the issue either because they were former techies and that's how stuff was implemented on less powerful hardware. Anyhow, the fellow got frustrated and quit. That's how he became an ex-colleague.