Mon cher Touriste, old bean...
You really can't go on about the so-called naysayers (that always sounds like a horse to me) "dishing out abuse" and then talk about internet kiddies posting from their bedrooms.
When I was a kid, we most certainly didn't have an Internet. We had to make do with the adventures of Ms Fiona Richmond in the pages of Men Onl[That's quite enough of that. - Ed.].
I have talked to those who conceived, argued for and designed the JSF. I talk to people who love it. I talk to people who know what they are talking about and who think it's a strategic mis-step.
On balance, I believe that the F-35A can be a competent stealthy light bomber in the face of today's fielded and deployed (see: Syria) air defense threat. It will be in more trouble as multi-band fused radars come on line, and some way will have to be found to deal with these. The F-35B has troublingly short legs and the F-35C is slow, and both are very expensive.
I think those who praise the F-35's fused avionics and sensors are sincere, but most of those are USAF or Marine guys coming off 1980s-technology aircraft. Some are from Typhoons, and the Typhoon hasn't got its fusion together yet.
Nothing I've seen convinces me that the F-35 will do well in A2A except by staying out of the threat's way. By the way, the senior ACC guy at the Fighter Conference, the one who talked about a new F-15/16 buy, said flat-out that it can't stay with an F-16 in BFM...