That's exactly right, it's personal preference. There are people who like some things already thought out for them, and there are people who always build up a mental model of what they want first and for whom it's a burden to then have to map that model to whatever an opinionated framework wants. I think you're more the person who builds the Lego pirate ship with the instructions and then mods stuff to make it more awesome, while I'm rather the person who builds the pirate ship, then gets bored, takes it apart completely and builds something else from the ground up ;-). There's advantages and disadvantages to both modes of doing things.