I'm a big SQL fan too. Like the author, I kind of intuitively got the order after years and years of writing sql but if the syntax had evolved into FROM then SELECT I could get how it would make more sense. As it stands most of my queries start out:
1. "SELECT *" because habits
2. Start writing the FROM/JOINs and table aliases
3. Go back and refine the SELECT to tableAlias.ColumnName
4. (OPTIONAL) Aggregates
5. Forget the WHERE clause and burn the optimizer's cached query plans to the ground! (j/k, add WHERE or just throw a TOP 500 into the SELECT)
1. "SELECT *" because habits
2. Start writing the FROM/JOINs and table aliases
3. Go back and refine the SELECT to tableAlias.ColumnName
4. (OPTIONAL) Aggregates
5. Forget the WHERE clause and burn the optimizer's cached query plans to the ground! (j/k, add WHERE or just throw a TOP 500 into the SELECT)