I mean it in the opposite sense, actually (that XMLHttpRequest - or more precisely, Microsoft's original version of it - was a leap forward, whereas fetch/axios

I mean it in the opposite sense, actually (that XMLHttpRequest - or more precisely, Microsoft's original version of it - was a leap forward, whereas fetch/axios/friends are, for the most part, merely a convenience over now established capabilities) Similarly, sure you can do point-free style w/ ramda's `R.add` but realistically, do you really? The fundamental game changer capability is the language's ability to do math in the first place; anything on top is arguably cherry on the cake. `at` seems uncannily similar in that regard. Wrt something being in a 3rd party library vs stdlib, I'll generally prefer a batteries included approach in JS because module resolution is complex enough to cause difficult problems to troubleshoot (peerDeps hell, complex symlinking semantics, library duplication in bundles, core.js explosion, package manager specific breakages, etc)