Something being very common and a very common source of portability issues isn't exactly contradictory. Its a bad idea, and it is outright being taught in modern game programming courses that its a bad idea, but common in older guides, specifically because it caused so many problems. Im pissed at this specific construct because I got it handed to me in a huge game library and had to spent a long time figuring out why it wasn't working in rare, but important cases.
But my point is that on the platforms that matter, it's not really a source of portability issues, and not a problem. For gamedev, anything outside of VC++ and Clang are niche and thus largely ignored.
