Neither of those posts state 17.5deg as being a guaranteed swift response upon full application of back stick, and in fact the Airbus documentation does not mention 17.5 degrees at all. You're taking the absolute value given in the BEA report out of context and grafting it to the Airbus documentation in a way that is not consistent with the way the documentation is written in order to claim that there should have been an expectation of 17.5 degrees, when that doesn't seem to be the case.
And I *am* sympathetic to Asseline in some respects, particularly the lack of oversight and poor preparation materials given him by the airline. This does not alter the fact that the conduct of the flight seems to be consistent with the negative traits sometimes ascribed him, and *on that particular day*, as I said, he seemed to be displaying those traits during the conduct of the flight. The two positions are not mutually exclusive.