Of course it is a matter of opinion, but you have to keep in mind that node itself isn't a framework like rails, and express while similar to sinatra with declaring routes is very un-opinionated about how it handles things. That is one reason I enjoy using node and a lot of the modules and add-ons created for node, giving me the freedom to do what I want from the start and not fight against the 'right' way the creators intended.
Rails doesn't "force" you to use their way. You don't have to call your table "people" if your model is called "person".
It just that you have additional freedom not to configure anything if you are ok with the default configuration.
in many other frameworks you always have to configure everything, abut in rails you might just go with the defaults and skip the configuration altogether.
If express had code generators that would generate standard layout for models etc it wouldn't hurt anyones' ability to use their custom layout.
