They’d have to invent a syntax for infix function calls akin to Haskell’s backticks which other people would complain about.

(I’m happy we don’t have to write queries in yaml, only half joking.)

Other popular databases have named functions for this:

https://www.sqlite.org/json1.html

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json-function-refere...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/json-fu...

(Too bad there was no standard for these.)

And Postgres has a ton of `JSON_` and `JSONB_` functions, so the weird operators are even more baffling.

Why have infix anything? Functions have names and they're always the first symbol in a function call. SQL also has a convention of using `PLAIN ENGLISH WORDS` which declaratively describe the result set or operation. The weird JSONB operators are just... way out of place.