After a lifetime of avoiding revolvers because "military automatics are superior" I bought a Taurus 85 light weight. It's a perfectly ok gun. In fact the entire snub nose genre is expanding. Colt reintroduced their Cobra model because it will sell, S&W has a significant portion of their inventory in revolvers, Taurus is a significant competitor. They are opening a new plant in GA for more production.
Snubs are retro, the 5-6 shots fit the self defense working envelope, a .357 can shoot .38 for practice. They have some interesting features - you can see the ammo, it's not concealed in a hidden magazine, the grips can be altered to suit with no compromise to fit a stick shaped insert. You can get SA or DA or both, sights are either combat or target oriented, you can go hammerless (really, spurless) in two or three ways and yet not a striker design. They clean pretty easy, too.
What's not to like?
They are typically larger in defensive calibers we consider as minimum. Simple as that, the cylinder protrudes more than a single stack. In most other dimensions they are somewhat easier to conceal, they tend to conform to the human body somewhat more readily. They have a long history of use which means you can find accessories with little difficulty, as opposed to a newer mag fed gun with $45 inserts. You don't with a revolver. Few feeding issues in comparison, either, however, slower and more complicated to reload. Under use they are no more or less reliable than autos these days - autos have gotten that much better. You do need to clean the barrel/cylinder gap to keep it from jamming the gun.
Older guns were built when labor was cheaper and therefore had more hand fitting operations, but that also means replacement parts require more handfitting operations. They are not a design that promotes drop in parts. The snub is also one of the first handguns purposely modified for carry and use in close combat under civilian conditions - the Fitz variants were some of the first in the 1920's and drove demand to the point all the manufacturers copied the design features and included them in their lines, some even inventing different sized frames for them. They also included alloy frames once the manufacture was understood in the mid 1950s.
On the other hand, few recommend the continual shooting of a lightweight .357 at the range, either.
In the automatic world, small concealed guns aren't as appreciated.
.38 Sp isn't a lightweight round, and newer ammo has improved it's ballistics. .357 is considered formidable for self defense, but owners are less inclined to shoot much of it substituting .38. Another choice is - of all things - 9mm Parabellum. It's another same sized bullet, the ballistics however are improved, and the use of retainers to hold them facilitates reloading.
Stainless 9mm's with moon clips are getting more interest. With all the ammo development intended to improve them to the point some consider them interchangeable with the slow moving .45 ACP, results are a lot more comparable. In the smaller J frames with 5 shot cylinders, they are more compact than the .40's, too. Win win for finding ammo nearly everywhere now.
A duty grade 9mm double stack would be bigger and weigh more, yet that design is really a holster gun for field use. For personal carry it's got a lot to conceal, weighs more, and could arguably have more ammo than you need considering the bulk of reported confrontations involve three shots or less, if the gun is discharged at all. Narrowing down those likelihoods is where we each assess risk. How many gunfights do we get into with reloading? Most of us don't even pull the trigger the first time.
This is why snubs are a growing field of ownership. They are seen as an effective choice while appreciating their tradition and history.