Indeed it can be argued that the pitot tubes could be better designed and also that Air France should have taken quicker action to replace the Thales design with the Goodrich design.
That does not negate the need for the crew to respond appropriately to the incident. This crew didn't and how and why the crew responded to an incident which wasn't necessarily terminal is the key to the accident. It doesn't rest on incompetence but what caused them to disregard laid down procedures and adopt a totally different course of action. This question is not an aircraft issue but a human issue. After all pilot training for these big aircraft rests on dealing with unusual situations in the simulator. Maybe this situation isn't covered in which case there might be a training deficiency. Even if this is the case training should have been sufficient for the crew to successfully diagnose and avoid the stall and crash. I did mention in a previous post that there are occasions were people will do something they actually don't think they are doing in a stress situation and others have spoken of the instinctive reaction to pull back on the stick. This may have a bearing on what happened in the cockpit. Here is where training and standard procedures are vital. As to why this crew did not follow the latter - this is what I mean by the realms of psychology and human reaction. The transcript released by the BEA is instructive.