It's better, because it maintains the shape of the sail and slight adjustments to the mainsheet will not effect the shape of the sail and keep it in it's power band. Without the boom, every time you move the mainsheet, the sail changes shape, the airflow over the front and back change, the pocket moves and all of that effects the performance. It's then difficult to get it back quickly. Think of the sail as a wing on a plane. Only we us it for forward motion instead of for hight. They don't want to change the shape of the wing every time they made a small adjustment in altitude.
With a boat like the 16 that has a boom, day's can be spent perfecting the sail pocket by adjusting the batten, downhaul and backhaul for different weather conditions or sailing angles. Once you have that down you can quickly set the boat up for what ever you want.
Now, I like to sail with my hull as high up as possible, on the edge of tipping over and I don't care about speed or power. That means I want my pocket higher up on the sail and my mast racked forward to give it more lift. But a day at Erie with big waves and wind, I go for more rake and a lower pocket By adding the boom it will keeps it's shape and I can start to work on batten tension. I've added the gauge stickers made for the 16 to my battens, once I have it where I want it can be reset it to the same place before hoisting the sail.
I hope this helps.
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