FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION PURPOSES, does the location of the slug within a URL matter?
There's no doubt that you could code URL slugs to work properly in any order. I'm more interested to know if search engines place different weights to portions of the URL on the right-hand-side vs the left-hand-side
For example, here the slug appears at the end of the URL: Why do some websites add "Slugs" to the end of URLs?
Whereas here the slug appears in the middle of the URL: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/why-do-some-websites-add-slugs-to-the-end-of-urls/47427
Unfortunately, given Google's (and most other search engine's) security through obscurity (fear of gaming of the system if any clear methods are described/explained), there's just not going to be a clear, demonstrable answer.
On the whole, you can assume that if it seems slimy, Google will penalize it, and if it seems semantic/useful, Google will promote it. In the case of the above url, it's my guess that Google will treat both the same, but that's entirely a guess, and outside of a Google algorithmic engineer stopping in here, I doubt you're going to find anything more definitive.