Interesting point, but that would apply to function notation in general, not just relational algebra. a(b(c(x))) is "backwards" because the functions are evalu

Interesting point, but that would apply to function notation in general, not just relational algebra. a(b(c(x))) is "backwards" because the functions are evaluated in the opposite order than they are written. This is a flaw in math and in most programming languages! I suppose stack-based languages have it right, and the OO method chaining syntax in Linq and in e.g. JQuery has it right, since evaluation order is left-to-right.