Why Custom Attributes in .NET Give Me Nightmares

Some people may think I am a shill for .NET. With my previous post, they may be right. However, as much as I like .NET, there are some things that just really do not make any sense to me, and they frustrate me to no end. Given that I maintain a PE parsing library and thus am deeply familiar with the anatomy of .NET binaries, I feel I am qualified to complain about some of the design choices ...