Modularism is my favourite. I am enjoying using ExpressJS of all things, because it comes bare bones but you are a few mix/match middlewares from having it set up as you like. And the process of setting them up is not a chore, it is valuable, you now know how your thing works. Whereas frameworks give you the kitchen sink behind a facade that makes most happy paths easy. But eventually you have to deal with that complexity one way or another, and usually it is by hacking together stack overflow and github issue answers :-)