> while most of the queries could also be translated to relational SQL, Cypher's linear construction using WITH clauses is far, far easier to reason about, IMO.
MATCH (p:Person)-[r]-(c:Company) RETURN p.Name, c.Name
So I'd say that linear queries are one of the things I like about Cypher, but the clean abstraction of complex `JOIN` operations is another huge one.
… and «-[r]-» can represent any relationship direction, which obviates the need for constructing separate queries for inverse traversing relationships. Kinda like running a compiler forward and backward.