Why “$().ready(handler)” is not recommended?

Question

From the jQuery API docs site for ready

All three of the following syntaxes are equivalent:

• $(document).ready(handle

Answer 1

I got an official answer from one of the jQuery developers:

$().ready(fn) only works because $() used to be a shortcut to $(document) _{(jQuery <1.4)}
So $().ready(fn) was a readable code.

But people used to do things like $().mouseover() and all sorts of other madness.
and people had to do $([]) to get an empty jQuery object

So in 1.4 we changed it so $() gives an empty jQuery and we just made $().ready(fn) work so as not to break a lot of code

$().ready(fn) is literally now just patched in core to make it work properly for the legacy case.

The best place for the ready function is $.ready(fn), but it's a really old design decision and that is what we have now.

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I asked him:

Do you think that $(fn) is more readable than $().ready(fn) ?!

His answer was:

I always do $(document).ready(fn) in actual apps and typically there's only one doc ready block in the app it's not exactly like a maintenance thing.

I think $(fn) is pretty unreadable too, it's just A Thing That You Have To Know Works™...