I've been using Django almost as long as I've been using SQL and I prefer the SQL ordering more: it matches the rest of the code, making it faster/easier to read. As a crude example:

  SELECT results FROM source WHERE criteria

  results = source(criteria)

It's rare to see someone want to change assignments in code to be like:

  source(criteria) -> results

Where I see it as the same thing: the SELECT columns, like the variable assignment, are the interaction point with the following lines of code.

And yes, CTE ordering does annoy me because of this. Putting it in the middle is pretty much the worst order.