[barrkel]

Popularity is important if you want to hire developers - developers are generally less interested in moving their career in a different direction than the industry trends.

Popularity for frameworks is also important if the framework needs adapters to enable third-party libraries to work with the framework. Depending on how opinionated the framework is, the friction in embedding libraries may hamper productivity indirectly.

If you're a one man band, then it's definitely less important. If the framework is a really good fit for the job, likewise. Otherwise, there's safety in numbers.

[anoncoward778]

"Popularity is important if you want to hire developers" 15+ year vet here. I'd have to disagree. Popularity is important if you want to hire green developers. Not if you want good ones.

[barrkel]

I've been coding for 25 years, getting paid for it for 21 years.

If you want to grow a team, you need to hire a mix of experience levels. With younger devs, talent is correlated with being opinionated - they have passion that hasn't been balanced by broad experience. And opinions are fashion-led. Find me a young dev who has no real opinions, and I'll show you a dev who has no taste.