There was only mention of a facelift, which can be good or bad. And lots of facelifts nowadays are quite bad, so I understand the concern.

The main reason I've used claws for the last 12 years is because it looks elegant, clear, clean, simple, and most important: consistent.

It doesn't need a facelift or an overhaul! In fact, as soon as that happens I (and I suspect, majority of users) will leave it forever.

I haven’t seen any modern UI for desktop apps which wasn’t bad in the sense the parent meant: too little affordances, not following long-established OS conventions, not using the native controls and look&feel, not being keyboard-navigable, etc.

so, he is suggesting not to change anything about claws? :-)

It’s almost impossible to make good UI without dumbing things way down. Either that or I’m lacking imagination.

Just look at the Date format field in the Preferences screenshot. It's really hard to not find a more user-friendly way to do it, IMHO.

UI and UX matters more than developers care to admit.

Ok, I'll bite-

What would be a functionally equivalent, but more user-friendly way to do it? (And preferably not 10x harder to implement)

For example an additional drop-down menu with common date string formats, where the first entry is the OS default for the given locale.

Additionally one could add a text label, which displays an example date formatted by the currently selected choice.

See? It's really not that hard, you just need to switch the perspective for a minute: what would I prefer if I were a user? Hiding the complexity from the user is one step forward to a better UI.