Single executable files are very nice because you don't need to run `apt install <14 dependencies>` to try a piece of software, you just try it and if you don't like it, you delete it without any cruft left on your system.

Go and Rust are two languages whose compilers produce statically-linked executables and they are growing in popularity, so you should expect to see more and more of these kinds of programs. And as these programs become more spread, I expect that other languages (either existing or new) will make it easier for developers to distribute their projects as single files.