https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
> The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings.
According to the index Java is 6x more popular than JavaScript.
You are right that doesn't reflect the # of GitHub protects. It's mostly limited to professional avenues.
JavaScript is so ubiquitous for any sort of web programming that it's often not even mentioned in job reqs or courses. Instead of JS, its often Node, React, Angular, or other JS-based stacks that are the focus. If an poll were to be taken of what languages HN (or Reddit or Slashdot or Yahoo or Apple...) visitors programmed in, I would be shocked if JS came in 7th place. Heck, even among my friends who work at Apple, JS isn't that far down the frequently used list.
Do you honestly believe that Visual Basic .NET is a more popular language in 2017 than JavaScript is?
> It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
Also, you might find it curious that JavaScript has stayed pretty steady in its position on the index, since 2002. That's a healthy dose of "this language is still relevant".
It's not because of "liking", simple facts.