Is there any reason to compile to DVI rather than PDF these days?

Unless you are a heavy PSTricks user, I think the answer is no, you can always go to pdf directly. Actually, in modern TeX distributions, latex is pdflatex in dvi mode; the underlying engine is the same.

There is a reason: pdflatex's lack of support for eps figures. If you have a program that only outputs eps graphics and wants to include them in your document, the best alternative is to use latex + dvipdf; if you use pdflatex you have to convert them somehow, and the most practical way is to use epstopdf, whose output is underwhelming.

EDIT: My point is: the pdf outputted by epstopdf is buggy and ugly; so if you can't generate the picture in pdf, your best shot is using latex instead of pdflatex.

Some of the journals I use require figures to be submitted separately in eps or tiff format, so that they can deal with not just the latex work, but also the archiving of the figures in higher resolution for the journal website. I don't know why they prefer eps and tiff to pdf, but they do, and they are "the boss".