I'd be careful with Github stars, but in general I don't think it is unreasonable at all to take the popularity of a project into account before choosing it. Th

I'd be careful with Github stars, but in general I don't think it is unreasonable at all to take the popularity of a project into account before choosing it. Though this matters a lot more for things like frameworks that touch all parts of your application compared to smaller libraries that are more contained and can be switched out easily. The smaller a library is, the easier it is generally to just fork it and maintain it yourself if you need to. In that case there is no big danger in choosing an unpopular one. But for large, complex dependencies it can be very problematic if they become unmaintained. That is a risk that is always there, and that you have to keep in mind while choosing your dependencies.