# #537: Datastar: Modern web dev, simplified

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-python-to-me/537-datastar-modern-web-dev-simplified
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-python-to-me/537-datastar-modern-web-dev-simplified.md
Podcast: [Talk Python To Me](https://stenobird.com/podcast/talk-python-to-me)
Published: 2026-02-21T20:36:58+00:00
Episode link: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/537/datastar-modern-web-dev-simplified
Audio file: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/download/537/datastar-modern-web-dev-simplified.mp3
Processing state: processed
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/talk-python-to-me/episodes/537-datastar-modern-web-dev-simplified
Duration seconds: 4597

## Resource

You love building web apps with Python, and HTMX got you excited about the hypermedia approach -- let the server drive the HTML, skip the JavaScript build step, keep things simple. But then you hit that last 10%: You need Alpine.js for interactivity, your state gets out of sync, and suddenly you're juggling two unrelated libraries that weren't designed to work together. What if there was a single 11-kilobyte framework that gave you everything HTMX and Alpine do, and more, with real-time updates, multiplayer collaboration out of the box, and performance so fast you're actually bottlenecked by the monitor's refresh rate? That's Datastar. On this episode, I sit down with its creator Delaney Gillilan, core maintainer Ben Croker, and Datastar convert Chris May to explore how this backend-driven, server-sent-events-first framework is changing the way full-stack developers think about the modern web.

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## Transcript

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