You might not fully appreciate the problems that patched operators cause. The minor convenience of not having to import patched operators into each file is outweighed by their disadvantages. It’s possible to use rxjs-tslint-rules to manage a central file, but it is not foolproof — see its README — and it depends upon TypeScript being used. And upon accurate types being used! Not everyone uses TypeScript and maintaining a central file of imports for a JavaScript application would be a nightmare. Pipeable operators solve many real problems.