I guess people's preferences are influenced by their experience.
I once tried comparing FMJ and soft point hunting loads in my .308. Shot each at lines of 5 water-filled plastic milk jugs (1 gal) at around 25 yards.
Thought I had missed with the FMJ (surplus ball). When I inspected, I found a .308 hole through each jug, leaking water slowly.
With the soft point hunting load (Remington Core-lokt 150 gr) the results were explosive (pun intended). The first jug was reduced to a sheet of plastic and thrown 4 feet. The second jug was ripped wide at both ends and thrown 2 feet. Jugs 3-4 had major damage, but stayed more or less in place.
That's the kind of terminal performance that makes my mind up.
I also did my own pistol expansion testing in wet phone book media. The load I use (plain vanilla Win Silvertips) expanded as advertised, even through 4 layers of denim. 6 layers of denim stopped expansion. Then it performed like an FMJ round would.
I also tried several .380acp rounds and found that the 102gr Rem Golden Sabre expanded reliably up to 4 layers of denim, and left "wound channels" much closer to 9mm than I would have thought.
"Wound channels" for rounds that expanded were much bigger than channels from FMJ, as you would expect.
The chosen loads also group well in my pistols and have proven 100% reliable to date.
So I'm sold on JHP's. Worst-case, they perform like FMJ. Best case is much better.