Express's middleware feature will make your apps easier to follow. That means you'll have fewer bugs, and when you come back to your code a few weeks later, you'll be much much more able to pick up where you left off. Express middleware is a method for modularizing your app and separating concerns. Why should your photo upload code care about loading in the current user? It shouldn't. It should just assume that if it gets invoked, then we have a current and valid user. Using middleware lets you get these sort of concerns out of your business logic, keeping your request handlers straightforward. Express ships with a pretty rich body of middleware thanks to Connect, and in this episode we look at a few of those and how to hook them up.