It's not significantly faster (or slower), it's the author that doesn't know how to run a benchmark. You can read my take on his take [0].
Leaving that aside, async is very advisable (even a must) if your backend throws requests against external and potentially blocking services and you want to keep answering your own clients without scaling for no reason.
Leaving that aside, async is very advisable (even a must) if your backend throws requests against external and potentially blocking services and you want to keep answering your own clients without scaling for no reason.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29128107