"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.
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.
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.