I sure don't want to have to deal with people putting `="01"` in CSV files.
We have multiple legacy systems where I work, communicating via batch csv files, some of which are authored & curated by staff in Excel. I can confirm that doing this would be a very bad thing indeed and make our systems grind to a halt.
For CSV that isn’t solely targeting Excel, hacks around the way Excel works are useless.
The reason you use CSV is that you want to use it with software that ISN'T Excel. Otherwise you'd just use .xlsx. No other software uses this convention, and it's not correct CSV.
I guess the HN audience has voted. The result is: hacking around Excel stupidities is itself a stupid idea.
If you want Excel to understand your output, perhaps use a library which can write xlsx files.