This isn't really fair. BeefWellington gave a reason why SQL is how it is (and how it has been for ~50 years). It's reasonable to ask for a compelling reason to change the clause order. Simon's post says it "has always been confusing", but doesn't really explain why except by linking to a blog post that says that the SQL engine (sort of but not really) executes the clauses in a different order.
I think the onus of proof that SQL clauses are in the wrong order is on the people who claim they're in the wrong order.
* SELECT first makes autocomplete hard
* SELECT first is the only out of order clause in the SQL statement when you look at it from execution perspective
* you cannot use aliases defined in SELECT in following clauses
* in some places SELECT is pointless but it is still required (to keep things consistent?)
Probably many more.
Some DBs allow it or allow it partially. It's a major constant friction factor for me to do a guess work across different database systems.