> unloved, unpopular, uncool things like Django, Rails, Laravel

Oh they're loved all right, it's just that they're (all three) very mature, packed with features, easy to pick up and people who work with them don't have a reason to sit around and discuss the tools.

I work for a smaller Rails shop and the atmosphere is just so nice there. We work on small (think $20k) projects for different niche customers, we absolutely reject SPAs (for what we do), we host the apps on cheap VMs, we don't worry about scaling at all, we talk to the clients a lot, we prototype fast and it's all just so easy and even brings good money.

Rails is the no-bullshit way, and definitely the human way.