It is a weird way to write it, I never use this notation for myself. When teaching though, I'd rather make the it more visually explicit that jq commands are a

It is a weird way to write it, I never use this notation for myself. When teaching though, I'd rather make the it more visually explicit that jq commands are a sequence of filters. With the former notation, a | explicitly tells the reader that it's the end of one filter and the start of a new one, the latter is more implicit.