>And, more important… does it matter? If author wants to continue using CF for his own reasons, that's fine but it's still worth knowing why others care about popularity : 1) job prospects - e.g. knowing Javascript will have more relevance in job hunting than knowing Microsoft's VBScript that was used in Internet Explorer 8. 2) large community that has seen similar problems and can provide answers to copy&paste code…
OTOH, all reasons are cons... an expert in an esoteric system with none of those will be paid her weight in gold by the fewer employers in need of a very finite resource... while js programmers are a dime a dozen.
Old, esoteric systems also require knowledge of the system, which can be practically impossible to get from the outside. This is why learning COBOL in 2019 probably won't get you a six-figure job maintaining old bank mainframes. You may know the language but if you have no clue how these bank mainframes work outside of using COBOL, you aren't going to be a great
candidate.