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Because it makes more sense?

I would wager within a rounding error, all humans have a lifetime of experience in following directions of the form:

1. do the first step in the process

2. then do the next thing

3. followed by a third action

I struggle to think of any context outside of programming, retrosynthesis in chemistry, and some aspects of reverse-Polish notation calculators, where you conceive of the operations/arguments last-to-first. All of which are things typically encountered pretty late in one's educational journey.

Consistency is more important. If you ever wrote:

a(b())

then you're already breaking your left-to-right/first-to-last rule.

There are some math books out there that use (x)f. My understanding is (some) algebraists tried to make it a thing ~60 years ago but it never really caught on.

There are, but they leave out the parens and use context to distinguish function application from multiplication.

This is a foolish consistency, and a contrived counterexample. Consistency is not an ideal unto itself.

Does it actually make more sense, or is it just more familiar?

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