Ejecting from Expo is not painful anymore. There was a huge improvement over last months. Check it out :D

Besides that, your point of view can be easily reversed. If both flows are very similar, why not use bare workflow? You have everything like it was rn-cli + ability to use [awe]some Expo features out of the box, thanks to "some extra configuration already made".

Moreover, I disagree about bare workflow is only for more experienced users. And "expo is not created bu Facebook" is also not an argument, because thousands of RN libraries aren't.

I encourage to try out "expo run" commands, a more robust replacement for "react-native run".