The word "portable" refers to the distinction of using assembly language programming versus a language like C, which with little modification can compile clean

The word "portable" refers to the distinction of using assembly language programming versus a language like C, which with little modification can compile clean on the target OS... I agree that to take a program from one unix and make it work on another is a tedious task, but the difference is minimal when you compare portability of architecture specific assembly language code. It is the reason "portable" languages like C were created.