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I think adding a date type would have probably doubled the complexity of JSON and taken it right out of the sweet spot that has made it popular.

This. Datetime is hard, because RFC 3339 is underspecified [1], and TOML wrestled with this a lot.

I thought strings with ISO8601-encoded dates was the de-facto norm (i.e. "20161026T2044+0200 for this comment's timestamp).

Have I been living in a bubble with the majority being less sane?

Just use epoch or ISO1601.

You're preaching to the choir here. Hell is other people's code.