That's exactly the context of where this quote comes from. He wanted to introduce Unified call syntax[1] which would have made both of those equivalent.
But he still has a preference for f(x,y). With x.f(y) gives you have chaining but it also gets rid of multiple dispatch / multimethods that are more natural with f(x,y). Bjarne has been trying to add this back into C++ for quite some time now.
But he still has a preference for f(x,y). With x.f(y) gives you have chaining but it also gets rid of multiple dispatch / multimethods that are more natural with f(x,y). Bjarne has been trying to add this back into C++ for quite some time now.
https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2015/n44...