It's not language quality and merits per se that are important. It's much about establishing status within a tribe that counts. PHP is seen as a low status language because many junior or moderately skilled programmers use it. Rust is a popular language among up and coming young programmers because they expect to over throw the dominance of older C++ programmers. Haskell is for the high priests if that is your path to power and status.
As a 62 yr old, it saddens me to think that young people don't experience the pleasure of a good phone conversation. Protip: If you want to end the conversation just announce it as in "ok, it's been nice talking to you, but I need to get off the phone." That never fails to work for me with no hard feelings.
