Thank you for the kind words.

I think for me the key thing is Datastar lets me keep most of my state on the backend, which makes the backend much simpler to write. It also lets me do immediate mode streaming of the HTML, which again is non trivial in something like react without a lot of added complexity.

So it's an enabler in that sense. But, yes it's totally possible to write a backend that falls over with datastar like any technology.

I also agree, that Datastar does benefit from backend experience and if you don't have that experience it can to some extent feel like:

"Draw some circles. Now draw the rest of the Owl".