I-Ford,
An interesting article, thanks.
Having said that the pedigree of the opinion is no more or less worthy than many you'll find here on PPRuNe:
Given the ardent nature of the comments, we asked Alex Paterson to respond to this question: For all the thousands of hours devoted to cockpit design, do good designs result?
Paterson is a retired Australian airline pilot with some 7,000 mostly shorthaul hours of experience flying many different types of aircraft, from the relatively simple DC-9 to the 'glass cockpit' B767. His extended response, paraphrased greatly here, reflects the insight borne of accumulated experience punctuated by the occasional hard lesson.
I wonder if his insight regarding autothrottles reflects accumulated experience using both systems, or like some of our posters here is the result of experience with one system and assumptions about the other?
ELAC