too many packages to choose from

[snippsat]

how do we measure the true popularity of python versus java or perl, for example

There are sevral ways like GitHut 2.0.
The Incredible Growth of Python

The trend is pretty clear with Python and JavaScript is used a lot.
JavaScript has an advantage because it's the langunge used in Browser.
Python dos well in most categories.
To mention some that has a part of this The rise of Data Science/(Pandas,Numpy..ect)/Machine Learning/Deep Learning.