It went through a bunch of iterations that simplified it, it used to be the abstract references operator which I believe would have a symbol lookup on the targe

It went through a bunch of iterations that simplified it, it used to be the abstract references operator which I believe would have a symbol lookup on the target function that would then allow the function to take over execution, thus allowing you to decide if the function would explicitly take the called upon object as `this` or as the first argument. It gradually got simplified but nobody could agree about the behaviour of if this would _just work_ with existing functions via the `this` or the first argument, I think eventually the proponents if it grew tired of the battle, they couldn't get unified support for one way or the other.. interesting the pipeline operator has basically gone through the exact same issues, but seems to have had much more attention to it. Ultimately I believe the bind operator was just too soon, generally at the time people were still trying to come to terms with what was a lot of new syntax coming to javascript, as well as react and similar things, now I think these chaining operators make a lot more sense to a lot more people.