Lukasa authored May 26, 2020 and Nathan Harris committed May 26, 2020

Motivation:

When we only want the first byte, rather than create temporary
intermediate arrays we can just ask NIO to give us the first byte. This
avoids unnecessary allocations.

Modifications:

- Replace `readBytes(length: 1).first` with `readInteger(as:
  UInt8.self)`

Results:

11% performance improvement in load testing due to reduced allocator
pressure on the hot path.