Yes, I have. Have you ever felt Arthritis or Carpal Tunnel? Probably not if you still have fingers . . . Anyways, from much research I can tell that both affect your hands and are extremely painful. Not to mention you can't amputate them and there are no viable prostetics made yet. So have fun with pain-filled fingers, good sir.
If the attack strength mechanic and axes dealing more damage would be a real problem, they can change that. NBT tags.
There is a video that shows that the more damage the axe does, it takes longer to bring the axe back up in order to swing it again.. Diamond Swords has a 0.8 second recharge, Diamond Axes has a 1.4 second (Not exactly, but I think I'm close) Therefore, you can swing a sword a bit faster then an Axe.. Swords will still be the Dominant weapon.
Whoever said the change is for the better probably never did real pvp once in their life. And no, I don't mean randie kit pvp servers that have gimmicky kits like tnt and bomber kits, but real pvp servers, like Kohi, Badlion, and MCSG.
If the developers are smart enough to program minigames like AgarPvP and Survival Games, I would 'assume' they're smart enough to figure out how NBT tags work. If somehow not, there's a wiki for a reason.
I want NBT tags when I have PvP. It's two different things. It's like asking "Why play a game when you can program one?"