The magic got introduced in J3.2 https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/commit/ee7ac38a44ef50fcf16680032e52ac118229a627 (although there was a bug fixed in 3.3). Tbh i'm not fussed if we use that bit or not - i just thought good code quality to use latest features.

The more important bit is doing the quoteName on the table name in the query