Rich - I agree with you too, I cannot imagine how a fast jet pilot would be able to accomplish a mission with the sort of instrumentation I look at every day. There is a real difficulty in specialising instruments for a given job though, and that is when someone transfers from one to the other.
I've never flown an Airbus, but have discussed at length some of the the differences with various colleagues who have. Plenty of stuff makes me think "why on earth did they do that?" and after a few conversations and different views I begin to understand what the designers were getting at (at least some of it, some of the ideas still seem totally bonkers to me!). I am sure it would be the same the other way round. The fact is that people change from Airbus to Boeing and from fast jet to airliner, so some common ground does help.
We also then get stuck in ruts - if we standardise everything, then when the new technology comes along it is suddenly non standard, so do we stay in the "dark ages" all the time, or improve? It is such a difficult situation, that often I think we need to be thankful that humans are so adaptable. No cockpit design is ever going to get it right, but that is no excuse for making a bad one!
There is so much that seems obvious and intuitive to me - but a lot of that is due to my upbringing and training. Red is lucky in China, so probably not the best colour to use for a warning caption. GEAR NOT DOWN - lucky us!