I understand your sentiment in general, but disagree in this particular case. I've been writing JavaScript for years in various projects, companies, partnership

I understand your sentiment in general, but disagree in this particular case. I've been writing JavaScript for years in various projects, companies, partnerships, etc. If I had a nickel for every time I saw... asyncOperation(_.bind(function(x) { this.x += x; }, this)); or... asyncOperation(goog.bind(function(x) { this.x += x; }, this)); or... asyncOperation(function(x) { this.x += x; }.bind(this)); or... asyncOperation($.proxy(function(x) { this.x += x; }, this)); or even... var self = this; asyncOperation(function(x) { self.x += x; }); ...then I'd have a lot of nickels. Binding a function to the current scope is _insanely_ common - adding syntax specifically for it makes sense. I would argue that it reduces the cognitive overhead of the language, since rather than needing to read another method call, examine arguments, etc. I can simply translate a 2-character symbol into the meaning "outer-context-bound function". There's a lot more bloat in the above examples than there is in this: asyncOperation((x) => { this.x += x; }); This is like arguing that the '+' operator bloats the language, when we could all just be using Number(17).plus(Number(43));