[dragonwriter]

> I wish SQL did not require a comma between items after the SELECT and before the FROM.

> Can you imagine how much time and effort that would save people?

I can imagine how much extra time I’d spend typing “AS” in queries, which would ne necessary for column aliases to be distinct from new select items. And how much more time I’d spend reading unreadable queries in contexts like logs where they aren’t pretty-printed. Net, it seems to be a big loss.

> We don’t need commas in between joins.

That’s because each join is introduced by a string of one or more reserved words (including JOIN).

If each select field was prefaces with FIELD you wouldn’t need commas, but...