No, I was speaking even more generally. There are thousands of mainframes still running COBOL that process trillions/billions of dollars of transactions per day. There are obscure software packages and programming languages you've never heard of doing many important, niche tasks. So no, popularity will never equal value. There is no wisdom in a mob. The. End.
Popularity has value because other people contribute to maintenance. It’s not the only value, but it’s still a necessary minimum for most library selection in professional work.
