If you're really just interested in achievement hunting, you can always just install an old version of the game.
I do think it makes sense to patch things like this for the same reason you don't - it's only used as an exploit and there's no legitimate use for it. Achievements tend to change difficulty with different versions of games anyway. Space age changed the difficulty of some of the base game achievements.
Speed runners will adapt.
Writing and speech don't need to be the same. You can say "March 12th, 2026" while writing it as either (all numbers) 2026-03-12 or (as spoken) "March 12, 2026". Just like you might write "$100", even though you'd never say "dollars one hundred"