Yes, I would agree that it helped but only based on the logic that a resume/cv is a document designed to advertise your accomplishments. If your accomplishments are best shown by your GitHub then include it, if it shows nothing don't! It's the same as advertising a volunteer group or something on a resume, a group with high participation and clear commitment to some purpose (if relevant to the job in question) is worth more than a random meetup group that met only once and when pressed the candidate clearly shows that it was invented for the resume. That's potentially 10 minutes or so the candidate could have talked about something else which is an actual strength.

Similar to how a much better developer has an advantage over me in an interview

I like to think people who are further into their career and keeping up with development have a github with lots of stars... the github doesn't make the developer, the developer makes the github.

Your statment is built upon the pernicious idea that all good developers should write code in their spare time.

I said 'stars' meaning they at least follow the market trends.