I answered this question using the common misconception as a guide. Usually second-guessing the QotD is guaranteed to trap us.

The discussion of physical vs. logical ordering is certainly interesting in an academic sense. If I was encountering problems with the edge case where physical order was actual impacting performance, I would appreciate finding this distinction quickly rather than delving into deeply esoteric notes.

However, for the day-to-day operation of a developer and database steward [not quite as lofty as DBA but still responsible for data health] - is there a compelling reason to be pedantic about the "sometimes physical disorder" of a clustered index? Doesn't the DB engine have enough optimization intelligence to ensure that the clustered index performs as well as possible across the largest number of use-cases? Armed with this new information about clustered indexes, am I going to do anything differently?

I'm not asking this to be a griefer. I am curious if I am being negligent of my responsibility for data if I don't really care that I don't know this level of minutiae. I am grateful that others have thought about (and managed) this for me. I build framework code so other developers don't need to worry about the heavy-lifting details; I am content to accept the same from grown-up DBAs and DBMS developers. Standing on the shoulders of giants, etc. 🙂