Well...I guess it's two different schools of thought.
See, I mix out of the box...through an analog console and all hardware processing, out to a stereo tape deck.
I use the DAW mainly to edit/comp tracks and some "spot" processing, but once I have my tracks ready, the DAW becomes mostly a playback machine.
From the stereo tape deck, I bring the output back into the DAW to capture the final stereo mix, and then from there it goes to the mastering stage.
That's why I said if you look around...you'll find a lot of people still use hardware, even in some "hybrid setup"...even at our home-rec level, but certainly at the pro level. Any way works fine it it suits your needs...DAW, analog or hybrid.
I'm not saying any one way is right/wrong, I just wanted to point out that hardware is still very much in use, and I still say that at the higher-end...hardware will trump software counterparts in many instances, which is why the big studios that can afford it, still use it extensively, but there is a lot of really good software too.