Columns in magento 2 has item sort order:
<item name="sortOrder" xsi:type="number">44</item>
But it doesn't change the column order. What need I to do to change columns order?
Since you can edit the sort order by drag and drop, the current sort order of the listing columns is cached in the browsers local storage.
You can refresh it by deleting the key appData in the local storage and then reload the page.
In Google Chrome you find the local storage Data in the dev console (F12) under Resources -> Local Storage -> http://your.domain
You need to clear down the ui_bookmark table in your database as it caches the sort order of the grid columns.