Concrete example, lets say I need 74123 in my project. If things were sane, I could just type in "74123" in Digikey search field and see what my options are. But you can't because this middlefix logic family thing. And searching for just "123" is completely useless.
Let's continue and say we go with the most jellybean 74HC family. Digging bit deeper I discover that in addition to the 74HC123 I was looking for, there is also 74HC4538, which has the same parametrics and same description. Yaay.
And just visually eyeballing the part numbers is pain because all the random prefix/middlefix/suffix characters that might or might not be meaningful.
I don't think finding basic jelly-bean logic parts should be this complicated. I can deal with analyzing the parameters etc, that is actually intrinsic complexity. But this part number stuff feels like just unnecessary bullshit getting in the way for discovering alternatives.
I suppose big players will use preferred manufacturers and predefined logic families, so this won't be a problem. And 74 series is not all that relevant these days anyways. But still some standardization would have been nice.