Programminglanguage popularity is a major factor in deciding whether or not to use it in a project.
because
score: 12
A more popular language will have a larger community and more community support, which results in more third party libraries or modules and more programmers to hire.
Larger number of people knowing programming language does not mean better community. For example, compare PHP and Ruby (this applies to good quality libraries too).
It is questionable whether most popular languages are painful. even if they were, by definition those being popular languages have enough programmers to support the project.
engineerwolf