I never liked Rails even when it was hip. Way too much bloat and magic behind the scenes, and also poor performance because of that.
I always preferred Flask, because it gave you a minimal framework, allowing you to cherry pick modules as needed. Sinatra looks similar if your preference is Ruby.
I cannot say that a Node stack is better though. Both Rails and Node are fairly awful, but for entirely different reasons.
When I first started with Rails/Ruby things felt magical. There is still definitely a little magic, but with time I've found it to be less so.
Usually all it takes is to lookup the source (which is well commented/documented) to see where the magic is coming from, the code is fairly easy to understand. If it works well use it, or take what you like/want and write your own methods, classes etc.
I always preferred Flask, because it gave you a minimal framework, allowing you to cherry pick modules as needed. Sinatra looks similar if your preference is Ruby.
I cannot say that a Node stack is better though. Both Rails and Node are fairly awful, but for entirely different reasons.