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When searching in the "go to symbol" pop-up, I find that because the search alphabetizes the results, it's very much the opposite of useful.

It shouldn’t alphabetize them, but instead rank them based on how good a candidate the match is for the search/filter string.

For example if we have George Costanza and Charlie Sheen in the list, and enter CS, it will show both names (as both contain C and S), but it should show Charlie Sheen first, since CS is a “better” match for that, than it is for George Costanza.

Okay, that makes sense.

A ranked-order search result makes a lot of sense when the order of symbols is unimportant and/or there are not enough identical results to confuse the list. But when there are a lot (say, over 20) of identical results, the placement in the document becomes very important, in fact it becomes just as important as the match itself.

A simple way to achieve this is with a search result that also outputs line-numbers... I know that would do the trick for me. Now for a crappy mock-up! This is not the prefect example, but you get the idea.