I've been shooting Glocks (and other pistols, too...) off & on for nearly 20 years now. I have owned and sold off a dozen or more over the years, but somehow I always keep coming back to the G17 and the G19 (although G30SF is a tidy little package in its own right!). I don't know if the G17 is really stronger than the G19, but it's certainly not weaker. As others have pointed out, the G17 was Gaston's first and basic design, and it's stood the test of time.
I took an "advanced" pistol class at Chapman Academy about 10 years ago in which we went through a phenomenal quantity of ammunition. The pistol I took was a G17 with NY-1 trigger and a 3.5 pound trigger connect that was fairly new to me. I put nearly 4500 rounds through that pistol in 5 days and it never hiccuped... and to the best of my recollection it was the only handgun in that class that made it all the way through the full course of fire.
