I have never understood the default configuration of Javascript Back-end frameworks.

The documentation says -> Install expressjs. Its a "framework".

But then u need to setup EVERYTHING yourself. Install cookie-parser, body-parser, io, routing FUCKING everything !!!

Why can someone not make it a standard installation covering the basic necessities ??

Know the feeling but honestly I'm pretty sure that if you search more deeper you will find something.
Another good option is to fork some express template from GitHub

Maybe some want to use expressjs but not a cookie-parser or maybe I want to use tough-cookie ?

That is from what I understand the goal of that minimalist framework. It as some basics and allow the user to install what he wants/likes instead of forcing the group to use what the makers adds.

@Grumm exactly, and if you do not use cookies, support for them only adds more things that can go wrong.

Because... npm install *

solves everything.

Honestly though, JS devs only build half a product on a good day and walk away... this creates the "community" of... well we need "feature x" and now we have... npm install feature-x to add if we want that thing, or feature-x2 because the X was a security festation and someone actually caught onto it and rebuilt it... or @feature/feature-x because now we have a whole new product based on feature-x....

Yea, it's that bad, you'll get used to it!

As much as I hate JavaScript, the rant shows a lack of understanding what ExpressJS is.

Yes, a web framework, but more importantly a middleware.

Which is the important nit bit - the installation of additional extensions to modify the behaviour of every incoming / outgoing request is the primary reason middlewares were invented....

Without the middleware and the extension model we're back to the very sad, bitter and perverted world of quadrillion configuration lines spread in the webserver - or even worse "htconf" files.

That's a nightmare no one wants anymore for good reasons.

Thus, yes - you have to configure and setup any middleware, but that's exactly the flexibility that allows you to have a fine grained control over any communication in -/ outgoing without having to interact with the webserver configuration.