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.