Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams. However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without something like Ex

Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams. However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without something like Express and just use http.createServer. The PHP abstractions are not always clear as you rightly point out (REQUEST = GET+POST+COOKIE...), but they are vastly different "magic" that you see in the Ruby land, for eg where you would rarely be ever thinking about cookies at all.