The JVM automagically swaps out blocking network calls executing in a virtual thread to a non-blocking implementation, so potentially many other requests can be served in the same time.

So you get the benefit of async frameworks, with none of the negatives: the blocking model is trivial to reason about, read, maintain, and works perfectly with tooling (you won’t get an exception in some WhateveScheduler, but at the exact line where it actually happened. Also, can step through with a debugger).