Excellent read. Blazer looks great. Having all of that data available to more than just the engineers really allows more data-driven decisions. When combined with the insight of someone on the local level, I'm sure it leads to great results.
<i>B: Yeah, but … yeah, we could’ve. But I like single-page applications. They feel more responsive.</i><p>It's not more responsive when you break the basic functionality of the web. Open in new tab has basically never worked with Instacart's site. I see that they attempted to remedy it a bit since the last time I placed an order (about a month ago). Now instead of generating hashbang URLs that the frontend completely ignores, it just generates broken URLs instead such as: <a href="https://www.instacart.com/store/whole-foods/departments/whole-foods/departments/89/aisles/985" rel="nofollow">https://www.instacart.com/store/whole-foods/departments/whol...</a>. I get that there are a lot of challenges involved in building a business like this, but a frontend that's had basic functionality totally broken for months shouldn't be one of them.
This is thorough and well done.<p>I'm curious why/how Instacart uses both python and ruby for their logistics. Seems like they could just use one.