in reply to Re^7: portable way to get system load average
in thread portable way to get system load average

you seem to have shifted the discussion to some "constantly current" system load, when i was (i hope) clearly talking about an average as in getloadavg(3):
The system imposes a maximum of 3 samples, representing averages over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes, respectively.
as i said, in certain context this metric can be a useful indicator (as opposed to an absolute value).