i would say:
DAWs are for producers, hardware is for musicians.
2 different workflows for 2 different kinds of people & ways of making music.
as for me, i did not manage to make myself productive with DAW workflow. i was constantly drowning in the countless possibilities of doing things instead of actually doing things.
hardware is much more restrictive, and suddenly, this helps.
i watched a lot of DAW tutorials on youtube and learned that one can be productive with DAW when he/she has an idea of the whole track before. (my favorite example is equalisation. every tutorial on youtube shows equalisation as the very 1st thing to do with a track. but how can one do this without the knowledge what sound it has to be?)
that’s the «producer’s» way of thinking, where «i have an idea» == «i have the plan».
when i start composing a track, i don’t hear the target result in my head and don’t know what it has to be like. i experiment. no plan. so hardware with its restrictions is more suitable for me and my chanses to get a finished track in the end.