Comment by garrettgarcia
1 year ago
> Sounds a bit like "new thing scary" unless you show why having select in front actually avoids problems
This isn't really fair. BeefWellington gave a reason why SQL is how it is (and how it has been for ~50 years). It's reasonable to ask for a compelling reason to change the clause order. Simon's post says it "has always been confusing", but doesn't really explain why except by linking to a blog post that says that the SQL engine (sort of but not really) executes the clauses in a different order.
I think the onus of proof that SQL clauses are in the wrong order is on the people who claim they're in the wrong order.
But it has been explained many times from many angles.
* SELECT first makes autocomplete hard
* SELECT first is the only out of order clause in the SQL statement when you look at it from execution perspective
* you cannot use aliases defined in SELECT in following clauses
* in some places SELECT is pointless but it is still required (to keep things consistent?)
Probably many more.
> you cannot use aliases defined in SELECT in following clauses
Some DBs allow it or allow it partially. It's a major constant friction factor for me to do a guess work across different database systems.