GP clearly shows why it is. I think SQL is great but their point is spot on.

The wrong order in the statements is a minor inconvenience but the widespread use and having an industry standard is 100x as valuable.

Agreed. The last thing I need is more flexibility in how people write queries. It would be shortly followed by numerous aggressive query formatting tools. Things would get messy fast.

That's just his opinion. SQL does it's job extremely well, is relatively easy to parse for its inherent complexity. That somebody would like FROM before SELECT or WHERE after GROUP BY is of no consequence.