I'm sure this point has been made elsewhere, but lens design is a huge bag of compromises. Symmetric designs are great, but not for (current) digital sensors, and probably not for AF. Some asymmetric designs are low distortion, but have CA (color fringing in out of focus areas). Other sharp designs have mustache distortion. Some designs are good (e.g., Contax zooms) but are smaller aperture and heavy.
But now that we *can* do software correction for purely geometric distortion, that frees up one variable so that the others - low vignetting and color cast on digital sensors, sharpness to the corners, low CA, light weight, fast AF - can be improved. I'm not seeing that this is a bad thing. Certainly not "unprofessional". Sure, if there is a lens design that matches all the other requirements *and* has no geometric distortions, that would be better. I'm betting that there isn't one.
--Matt