i don't think there are any (sane) people out there who would actually make patches relying on invisible connection order.

...I do. But I'm not that insane, so I make the connection-order visible while patching (via object-positions etc.).
In most cases that ends up with a r2l-order, as I said..
...And I hope that the invisible order can be made visible with plugins ...some day... NEED HELP with that!!!

Now if I'd start using triggers, I would use them every time there is something that has a certain order, or needs it.. But if I don't from time to time, isn't that sloppy as well?!?

I just did some crazy math with soundtables (=long). Eg. a "special mean" or a convolution or whatever.
In general mathematical operators are an integral (or sum) over the product of a kernelfunction and the actual function one wants to change...
So for example imagine you have a table with just 10 sec. of audio (~ min. 441000 samples (up to 1920000, with better hardware...)) and your kernel is (only) 1000 samples long. So in the end there have to be done like ~1000*441000 (max {192000/44100*} 1000*1920000) computations PER OBJECT!!
This certainly is nothing for realtimeprocessing, but if I had the choice I'd rather want to wait just eg. 1min. instead of 2mins.. (maybe a little exaggerated for this example but not impossible)
Dont you think it's a good idea to save as many objects as possible in such a case?!?

AND one could even argue that by using the [trigger] object, the patch is going to become neater, and therefore easier to follow / understand, and therefore critical patches can be more easily optimised.

Well, it depends on what you see as optimisation...
If you create something that is meant to be used, I think optimisation means making it as slim and fast as possible.
If you want to look at it, it should better be looking good...
...I have seen patches where triggers are used on the one hand, but then the objects are spread everywhere around the canvas on the other hand, like "Why should I even care - I use triggers already"..
Trying to read that isn't comfortable at all.
Generally more freedom is certainly a feature not a bug! And certainly one needs to be able to handle it. I think that's not only true for pd, anyways..
As Jwif said, in most programming languages it's up to the user to not write sloppily styled code.

Finally just let me say: "Triggers are crutches"

I gonna sketch out a patch with possible GUI-plugin-solutions, sooner or later.
But since I don't know how to really write them,
IS THERE SOMEONE OUT THERE, who is able to write a "quick and dirty" GUI-plugin??? ...that's TCL/TK, isn't it?!
One of the best things about plugins (as well as [trigger]s) is that one doesn't have to use them! So, even more freedom for everyone!

@Flipp said:

Well, it depends on what you see as optimisation...
If you create something that is meant to be used, I think optimisation means making it as slim and fast as possible.
If you want to look at it, it should better be looking good...

I understand your objections against the use of triggers, but what you're saying here really doesn't make much sense to me. Given the enormous processing power all actual cpu's have, i can't really believe people are still patching to save cpu consumption. We're all writing code to be executed by computers, and computers don't really care about coding styles, as long as it compiles it's fine. But then there are runtime errors which compilers can't catch and can end up in very long debug sessions. Then it's up to human beings to read the code, and i can assure you that humans absolutely benifit from a clear coding style. Given that pd is such a great application, with a very nice community spirit where everyone can download, dissect and study from others, i think code that "looks good" is crucial.