How important is platform independence?

Question

A lot of software frameworks, languages, platforms claim platform independence and boast it as a selling feature. However, I have failed to understand how could this such an important feature. For example, Java is said to be platform independent - but why should I care when I know that my webapp is going to run on only one platform? Is the overhead of making an application platform independent really worthwhile?

Answer 1

For webapps it mostly isn't an issue as they by definition are almost "platform independent". I mean, users of application mostly aren't tied to any particular platform.

For desktop apps it is a question of your potential client base. If you think that you will benefit from multi platform targeting, then it's worth to make your application platform independent, otherwise better stay away from it :)

Answer 2

If you know your app is going to run on only one platform you shouldn't care - you should evaluate the framework using the same criteria as every other framework on your target platform.