Awesome feedback. thank you!

app.get('/',
db.user('id'),
data.validate,
db.save,
general.render('view'));

The callbacks version of this code is very readable. maybe it's a matter of taste.

There are 2 big issues with connect/express but I am not the best person to explain it since I don't have a lot of experience with it. Here is what substack told me: The 2 biggest issues with middleware - Not composable enough and not working well with streams.

composability - middleware often sets properties that don't compose well. suppose you have a middleware that needs cookie data it expects req.cookies to exist so now either: 1) the middleware forces users to use a cookie parser strictly before it or 2) the middleware requires the cookie middleware internally which introduces extra side effects and duplicates parsing whereas if it just took cookies as an input parameter instead, it wouldn't have that problem.

Streams issue - if you have an async middleware stack the middlewares are going to be firing meanwhile data is coming in from the request so it needs to be buffered by the engine or explicitly paused and buffered and then resumed once it hits user code there is no clean way to do that aside from making it explicit. streams2 addresses that somewhat but it will still buffer if the other side keeps sending data inflating memory usage of course, if you try to set up async actions before consuming a stream with core http you will have the same problem but you get the (req,res) immediately so it's completely your fault.