[Twisell]

I recently had to train my new junior to level his SQL skills and I found this resource pretty helpful to make sense of this mess. https://learnsql.com/blog/sql-order-of-operations/

However I do also see the point of "SELECT first" just like a header you can infer the output data structure of a sub-expression without necessarily dive into the meat of it. It require a some brain training, but once you get there it oftentimes easier to navigate 100+ lines scripts by jumping from header to header (usually organized as CTE to make the code cleaner).