> I don't see them as markedly different with such a small example.
Of course not, because we're talking about a fundamental change in syntax that affects more than just two-line queries. PRQL puts the SELECT clause practically at the end of the query, after every join, filter, and aggregate. If you only care about the output, that's cool too: just look at the end. But if I want to understand a query in SQL, I have to read the entire thing backwards, clause by clause! By contrast, if the SELECT is at the end, that's not much of a problem.
Now you'll come back and say "but it's the same if you care about context: just look at the end!" And that's where we differ. I care more about writing, debugging, and understanding queries, whereas you think it's more important that the column names are up front, even if it makes understanding a nontrivial query much, much harder.
Of course not, because we're talking about a fundamental change in syntax that affects more than just two-line queries. PRQL puts the SELECT clause practically at the end of the query, after every join, filter, and aggregate. If you only care about the output, that's cool too: just look at the end. But if I want to understand a query in SQL, I have to read the entire thing backwards, clause by clause! By contrast, if the SELECT is at the end, that's not much of a problem.
Now you'll come back and say "but it's the same if you care about context: just look at the end!" And that's where we differ. I care more about writing, debugging, and understanding queries, whereas you think it's more important that the column names are up front, even if it makes understanding a nontrivial query much, much harder.