In 2009, ECMAScript 5 added a built-in bind() function which takes an object as a parameter and returns an identical function in which this will always refer to the object you passed it. (I couldn’t find anything that looked like a canonical documentation link.)
How is this different from jQuery’s $.proxy() function? Did $.proxy() come first before ECMAScript 5 was released? Is there a particular reason to favor $.proxy(function(){}, this) over function(){}.bind(this)?
proxycame first and you should likely favorbindas it is a standard. The way they are called varies slightly (due to being attached toFunction.prototypevs just being a function) but their behavior is the same.There is a pretty good post here: jQuery.proxy() usage, that ends with that advice.