[JohnFen]

The popularity of a language does not tend to correlate well with how useful or good the language is for a given use, true. But it is not meaningless, either.

If a language is popular, then companies are more likely to use it, if only because the pool of engineers they can hire from is larger.

For example, two companies I've worked for have seriously debated shifting to Java. Not for technical reasons, but because Java programmers are easy to find, and often are cheaper. (Neither of them ended up making that shift, though.)