I guess that at least helps me understand why RPi went with them as a distributor, even though their business seems archaic on this side of the Atlantic.
I don't know what you mean by Digikey being awful from a designer's perspective - I've long considered their parametric search a bona fide design tool. So much so that I actively avoid designing in parts that Digikey doesn't stock.
Digikey's and Farnell's parametric search are the best from a user's perspective. All the sites are pretty terrible from a designer's perspective. I concluded this from working out how to generate HTTP requests for them for my pet project: https://github.com/kasbah/1clickBOM
I don't know what you mean by Digikey being awful from a designer's perspective - I've long considered their parametric search a bona fide design tool. So much so that I actively avoid designing in parts that Digikey doesn't stock.