Sorry, I didn't intend that rant to be directed toward you specifically. I just mean that your comment sounds like something those Excel project managers would tell me and I'm tired of hearing it.
After years of hearing "that's not what Excel is for" I am left wondering what it is for. I have asked many "Excel pros" how to solve some problem in Excel and I honestly can't think of any satisfactory answers. Just "that's not a common use case".
The CSV behavior is just one of the annoyances. Conflating display format with data type is another. Silently changing data is another. My list of gripes with Excel is long and on this topic my fuse is short.
My experience is that Excel is the Swiss Army Knife application, sufficing to do almost any job even if it's not the best choice. Being installed on almost every desktop means it becomes the first choice tool for almost any task.
I'm just saying that editing CSVs regularly, preserving the formatting, while avoiding the import/export functionality is a very specific use case. It's likely not something excel project managers care about that much either. If the use case is popular, then there's going to be an editor that does it better. If not... tough.