Validation is one of the quality factors that a website can be built to accord with. It depends what your aspirations are. If you want the best quality possible, or if you want to have a successful website, then code validation is a factor.
In general, old web authoring apps, virtually all ecommerce software, virtually all forum software, many commercial CMS, and some open-source CMS all produce poor-quality code that does not validate and also has other faults such as on-page JavaScript, or too much scripting of other kinds.
Many new or updated web authoring apps, most open-source CMS, and some high-quality commercial CMS can all produce high-quality code.
Good code validates to one of the 4 most common standards, which range in quality from the best, down to the lowest acceptable quality:
xHTML Strict
HTML Strict
xHTML Loose (aka Transitional)
HTML Loose (Transitional)
A CMS that validates to xHTML Strict is the highest-quality of all, though these are currently rare.
Another thing to bear in mind is that the core application may well output perfect code, but low-quality templates or modules can easily wreck it.
That is what has happened on this site, we need a better template so that the code comes out green at the W3C, then it's much easier to spot when something is added that causes a fail.
Some people spend a lot of time getting their code perfect, others don't worry at all. It's just one factor among a hundred you could look at. If you think quality and web standards compliance are desirable, then you'll work on this aspect.
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