It has occurred to me, that when comparing the flyability, ergonomics, shock resistance & recovery ability of the Airbus FBW cockpit and control systems, as a flight control centre, it should be borne in mind that effectively what Airbus did in a decade or so was:
re-invent the cockpit form a pilot's perpective. Throttle levers that don't feedback, sidestick control, glass display including 'digital' and 'text' (albeit some strip) instruments replacing mostly analogue, etc.
A pretty monumental paradigm shift - but did everyone truly admit that this is what it represented, rather than perhaps Airbus & others leading the industry to describe (even excuse) it somewhat as 'not really different in principal'.
It is in fact very different, all-round, and in principal to what three-quarters of a century of flight up to that point had evolved as a modern cockpit...
It has been 'bedding down' ever since, into the aviation world's sub-conscious. Additional settling in is still taking place... the investigation of this accident, as so many before with more conventional cockpits had done, will be another step to fully accepting some of the imperfections that this man-machine interface represents and correcting them.
Only by being very open about the crew's cockpit experience, and their response - what was expected and what came naturally, can we further improve the modern 'cockpit flight centre' by integrating the best of both worlds.
Like the last UK Govts attempt at a 'truly joined-up government policy', the dots might all be there, but most are still quite some way from being even crudely connected, let alone integrated as a comprehensible, efficient and finely optimised cockpit for flight control.
It seems inevitable that mistakes were made in many areas of design as well as pilotage; even at this early stage it worries me that justifying them (individually) is quite possible, but never as a joined up whole for safely governing an aeroplane's flight under extreme and singular conditions.