[gwd]

a[5] means "From array a, select element 5", and nobody has a problem with that. If anything, the English habit of describing things in little-endian fashion ("Take a fork from the drawer to the left of the sink in the large kitchen") adds a lot of cognitive overhead because you have to wait for the end to figure out your first step, and then reverse the order. A much more practical way of writing that would be "In the large kitchen, to the left of the sink, there's a drawer; take the fork from the drawer."

[jbverschoor]

It's kind of nice to see which columns you're selecting, as they're always in the beginning

[gwd]

Right, that's a sort of counterpoint. It is nice to know that you're going to be getting a fork so you have context for the kitchen -> sink -> drawer instructions. Similarly, I expect in many cases, when you have a complex query, the fact that you know the result is going to be "userid, sum(score)", it makes the subsequent query easier to understand (as you know where it's got to end up). "Can you get me a fork? In the kitchen, next to the sink, in the drawer" might be even friendlier.