Yeah I can see why people get torn on date pickers. This was especially egregious back when they weren't as well supported/implemented across different browsers. The problem with them, as some people alluded in some comments, is that often times when people reinvent that wheel, they do an objectively worse job at it.
Because of my bad experience with these poorly implemented controls in the wild, these days I quite appreciate the way the <input type="date"> inputs appear on mobile (i.e. it's a completely different UI than desktop that optimizes against fat fingering/tiny hit areas/etc). Certainly beats implementations that rely on trapping input events and rewriting `input.value` on a plain text input...
Because of my bad experience with these poorly implemented controls in the wild, these days I quite appreciate the way the <input type="date"> inputs appear on mobile (i.e. it's a completely different UI than desktop that optimizes against fat fingering/tiny hit areas/etc). Certainly beats implementations that rely on trapping input events and rewriting `input.value` on a plain text input...