Don't feel alone, just talk to anyone that worked or owned cars/bikes with carburetors. By the end, most cars with carburetors had electric/automatic chokes but pretty much all bikes with carbs always had chokes. I'm guessing here but you must be from the Fuel Injection era.

Even in fuel injected engines, the "choke" is still there, except it's now called the idle air or idle speed control valve/motor. Cold engine require more fule/less air so the theory is still the same, only the mode of achiving it changed.