I think it's better at specifying intent, similarly to how you would use "for" and "while" in a programming language even though they are literally the same thing and more often than not they compile to, respectively, identical query plans and identical asm/bytecode.
Also if you work a lot with databases you often need to do outer joins, a full cartesian product is almost never what you want. The join syntax is more practical if you need to change what type of join you are performing, especially in big queries.
Also if you work a lot with databases you often need to do outer joins, a full cartesian product is almost never what you want. The join syntax is more practical if you need to change what type of join you are performing, especially in big queries.