I think there's been a major change in attitude from the majority of pilots that I know over the last 20 years.
When I first started, "slick" approaches were appreciated, manual flying was de-rigueur, the FDR was something that hit you on the back of the head when you flew into the side of a mountain and drinking yourself into insensibility on a 12hr slip was absolutely expected.
Since then, we've moved on and the job of the professional pilot today is to get the aircraft from A to B with the minimum exposure to risk and in the most efficient manner. This doesn't have to make it boring or unchallenging, just that the reward is less adrenaline-fuelled and more cerebral.
SAC are there for very good reasons. I remember a quote of something like 40% of landing accidents were preceded by an unstable approach. That is a remarkable number and lead to the conclusion that if we got rid of those kind of approaches, we'd get a big improvement in safety for precious little outlay.
Flying all over the world, day and night, I've grown to like having at least the last 1,000' with the aircraft in a stable configuration because it frees up capacity to monitor the weather, other aircraft and the other pilot. I can project ahead to the landing roll or the possibility of a G/A or rejected landing. Yes, I'm quite capable of flying a "run and break", top ruddered turn and sideslip onto the numbers but it's not what I'm paid for and no matter how good I think I am, it adds risk to the operation.