Why do we still use a Von Neumann Architecture in modern computers?

The Von Neumann architecture was first created in the mid 40s for use in a computing system known as ENIAC for research into the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons.

To this day the Von Neumann architeture is still primary foundation in the majority of modern computers. I have listened to a few historians and scientists mention that there is likely more efficient architectures and that Von Neumann himself didn't believe in its universal capability(unfortunately cannot remember enough to find a link).

So why do we still use this architecture in the majority of modern computing?

So why do we still use this architecture in the majority of modern
computing?

The assumption itself, first clause: Modern Computer

• They're tolerably easy to reason about and very well understood by engineers and developers

• They work very well for existing industrial workloads that drive the demand for hardware R&D; there is 60 years' worth of algorithms and software for Von Neumann machines.

Von Neumann closed under copper cable?

Finally - and only partly tongue-in-cheek: do note that it is very easy to obtain a decidedly non-Von Neumann machine from off-the-shelf parts: just buy two laptops and connect them with an UTP cable and you have a very strange machine where you don't have uniform, synchronized access to a single mutable storage or a single clock.

StackExchange Computer Science Q#107277, answer score: 7