I really don't like this article. It has a catchy, profound-sounding title that people bandy about to argue against stuff they don't like.

All functions, even non-async functions, are colored. In any large system codebase you'll have functions that can only be called in certain situations, with the right setup, whatever, and if you're lucky this is communicated by types but regardless those restrictions can't be avoided. It's easy to call low-restriction functions from high-restriction ones and not the other way around.

Furthermore, it's not like the alternative to explicit await doesn't have issues too (that the article doesn't mention). There is inherent complexity, it's a tradeoff, you can't just syntax it away.