Legacy? No way. Without triggers some features in our software would not be possible. I like and use triggers a lot. Where necessary, of course.

Otherwise users must not have access to tables and all updates must be performed with stored procedures, or use a midware that does the job, both are IMHO maintenance nightmare.

Dumb databases? I hate that. It's all in advertising and marketing muscle. Some systems use database as storage only. No constraints, no procedures, no views, no triggers. This is silly. And they claim 100% portability to any sql server. You don't an sql server at all for such purpose. Constraints are not fully portable, so they're not used.

Most of people that hate triggers, hate them for at least one of few reasons:

1. they don't know how to properly use, design and maintain database logic

2. they inherited a nightmare of a database from someone who doesn't know how to properly use, design and maintain database logic 🙂

3. hmmm

The problem with triggers is that they have vendor specific features and syntax, so if you work with multiple servers, you have to keep knowledge about each separately, but the same problem is with stored procedures too.