I'm sure they are although for programming languages that correlation seems to be particularly weak. But judging the quality of a programming language by its po

I'm sure they are although for programming languages that correlation seems to be particularly weak. But judging the quality of a programming language by its popularity causes a kind of distributed circular argument: People use a programming language (=it is popular), so we assume it is good. We use it which means it becomes even more popular, convincing other people it is good etc. When making a decision, using popularity as an easy but noisy indicator for quality can still make sense. If you kept your choice secret, you wouldn't even cause any negative externalities. But here, we don't make a decision so I don't think popularity is an argument worth considering (when evaluating the merits of the language itself, popularity does affect ease of hiring of course).