But why would the code quality suck if features or maintenance of supported systems was prioritized ahead of arcane architectures? Time is a limited resource, so why should extreme portability be considered the holy grail?
Did anyone write "extreme" portability? You can pick a ton of random architectures (e.g. PowerPC) that aren't common, but aren't extreme. The bugs that they find can be useful, and I evaluate them when I get them.