Well yeah, having precedence rules makes the notation more concise and can save you from typing lots and lots of brackets. And I don't think multiplication/division having higher precedence than addition/subtraction (and, by extension, AND having higher precedence than OR) is all that "screwball" - and even if it were, if you paid attention in elementary school, you already know it, so programming languages can rely on it. Of course, the moment they start getting "creative" with precedence, those exceptions turn into massive footguns...