My guess is that it is a result of processors getting faster, memory bigger and compilers better (and GUIs more complex). Functional languages do have some perf

My guess is that it is a result of processors getting faster, memory bigger and compilers better (and GUIs more complex). Functional languages do have some performance penalty over highly optimised code directly manipulating memory but for most usages such performance is not needed. Thus programmers tend to trade some of it for clarity of code and safety.