Exactly! In some cases like in recursive queries, CTEs may be the only way to achieve some result. In almost all other cases, people use them just because they

Exactly! In some cases like in recursive queries, CTEs may be the only way to achieve some result. In almost all other cases, people use them just because they apparently can't reason about joins, or don't like to do so. I frequently have to deal with SQL that looks like the person was writing an imperative algorithm.